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COPYRIGHT DEPOSOV 



THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 



THE CHURCH 
ENCHAINED 

BY THE 

REV. WM. A. R. GOODWIN, D.D. 

Rector of St. Paul's Church, Rochester, N. Y. 

Author of the History of Bruton Parish Church, and 
the History of Bruton Parish Church Restored 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE 
RT. REV. DAVID H. GREER, D.D., LL.D. 

Bishop of the Diocese of New York 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 

1916 






CoFTBIGHT, 1918, 
BT 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 



** 



w 



Printed in the United States of America 



JUL 13 1916 



2CI.A433776 



CO 






T( 



DEDICATION 

To all those who pray for a perfect willingness to 
suffer the loss of all things "that they may win 
Christ, and be found in Him" ; who, as Prophets, pro- 
claim the truth that makes men free, "come whence 
it may, and cost what it may"; who, as Priests, con- 
sent to offer costly sacrifice, that all may come "into 
the glorious liberty of the children of God" ; and who, 
as servants of Christ, desire to express a comprehen- 
sive faith in co-operative service to the Glory of God 
in the extension of His Kingdom among men; these 
pages, devoted to the search for truth and freedom, 
and an ultimate divine order, are humbly dedicated. 



PREFACE 

The thoughts relative to Christ and His 
Church and the world's great need expressed 
in this book are communicated because of the 
hope that, through the blessing of the Spirit of 
truth, they may minister to the building up of 
the Body of Christ in love. 

We seek the truth under human limitations. 
Often, in its pursuit, we follow false trails. 
Sometimes right trails are wrongly followed. 
The by-path is mistaken for the King's high- 
way. The point we reach is heralded as the 
ultimate viewpoint. The further and more far- 
reaching viewpoints not yet attained are not 
postulated as possible. A stake is driven down ; 
a barrier is built, and seekers after truth are 
warned and prohibited from venturing beyond 
the limit fixed. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

The truth incarnate has ever been enchained. 
We hear the clank of the chains by which the 
Church has been bound as we trace her history 
through the centuries. Sometimes these bonds 
have been imposed upon the Church, and upon 
seekers after truth, from without. As men 
"took Jesus and bound Him," as they chained 
St. Paul, and John Huss, and Jerome, and Lat- 
timer, and John Bunyan, so the world powers, 
and the powers of darkness, have bound the 
Body of Christ. These chains, externally im- 
posed, have ever served to test and manifest 
the power of the life divine, and have been the 
means of giving witness to the conquering 
strength of the spirit of liberty and truth. 

The chains that have really bound the Christ, 
and which have delimited the freedom of the 
Church, and hindered her in the fulfillment of 
her divinely given mission to be His witness, 
have been forged in the mind and heart and will 
of the members of His Body. 

The chains forged by the logical processes of 
thought which seek to confine the boundless love 



PREFACE ix 

of God, and the free grace revealed in the Great 
Gospel of redemption ; the chains forged by the 
narrow definitions and exalted pride and big- 
otry of ecclesiasticism, which bind the creative 
and redemptive forces of Christianity; the 
chains wrought out of the Church's trust in 
material power; the iron chains of bigotry, 
and the golden chains of luxury, and self-indul- 
gence and the love of pleasure ; and the chains 
which are unconsciously forged by the habits 
of neglect and indifference and procrastination ; 
these are the bonds which have ever bound the 
Body of Christ. 

These chains bind His Church to-day. Called 
and challenged by the world crisis to help and 
heal sorrowing and suffering millions, and to 
restrain the ambition and wrath of man, the 
Church finds herself enchained. She stands un- 
prepared in the presence of her greatest op- 
portunity and responsibility. Sent to minister 
in His name to the poor, the broken-hearted, the 
captives, and to give men liberty, she hears the 
call, "Come over and help us," but she is not 



xii PREFACE 



AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT 



Cordial appreciation is expressed, and grate- 
ful acknowledgment is here made of the kind- 
ness of the Right Reverend Doctor David H. 
Greer, Bishop of New York, for reading the 
manuscript, and for writing the introduction 
to this book ; to the Rev. Dr. Cosby Bell, Profes- 
sor of Theology of the Theological Seminary in 
Virginia ; the Reverend Editor of the Southern 
Churchman; and Mr. George Wharton Pepper 
of Philadelphia, who were kind enough to read 
the manuscript, and who offered valuable and 
helpful suggestions. This acknowledgment does 
not carry with it any intention of making these 
honoured churchmen in any way responsible for 

the views set forth. 

William A. R. Goodwin. 

St. Paul's Church, 

Kochester, N. Y. 
Easter, 1916. 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction by Bishop Greer .... xvii 
PART I— THE CRISIS AND THE CALL 

CHAPTER 

I The Crisis and the Church . 3 
II The Mission of the Church to 

Imperilled America .... 18 

III Materialism 31 

IV Civilisation 40 

V The Spiritual Mission op the 

Christian Church .... 51 
VI The Tragedy of Unprepared- 

ness . 63 

PART II— ECCLESIASTICISM AND CHRISTIAN- 
ITY. FORM AND SPIRIT. 

VII The Purpose Previewed . . 83 
VIII Logic and Catholicity ... 90 
IX The Intention and Extension 

of the Church 93 

X The Atmosphere of the Syllo- 
gism 98 

XI The Reformation a Distinctly 

Catholic Movement .... 102 
XII Can the Church be Defined? 105 

XIII The Church Under a Descrip- 
tive Title 113 

XIV The Message of the Transition 126 
XV The Terms "Catholic" and 

"Catholic Sanction" . . . 134 
xiii 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI The Appeal to the Past . . 155 

XVII The Ancient Paths .... 159 

XVIII Individualism 163 

XIX The Horns of a Dilemma . . 167 

XX The Paradoxes of Truth . . 174 

XXI The Central Ground Position 177 
XXII The Language of Courtesy 

and of Controversy . . . 182 

XXIII The Fence Through the Middle 
Ground 186 

XXIV The Priest and the Monk . 188 
XXV The Prophet and the Denom- 
inational Minister .... 197 

XXVI Necessary Restrictions Upon 

Liberty . 202 

XXVII The Perils of Protestantism 217 

XXVIII The Peril of Orders ... 227 
XXIX What Would Become of the 

Prayer Book 234 

XXX The Defence and the Exempli- 
fication of the Power of Or- 
ders 238 

XXXI What We May and What We 

Cannot Hold . . . . . . 243 

XXXII Ancient Land Marks ... 247 



PART III— CONFERENCE- 
UNITY 



-CO-OPERATION— 



XXXIII Are We Prepared? .... 251 

XXXIV The Challenge 257 

XXXV "The Church' ' and "This 

Church" 260 

XXXVI Conference and Co-operation 263 

XXXVII Movements Toward Unity . 277 



Chapter 
XXXVIII 



XXXIX 

XL 

XLI 

XLII 

XLIII 

XLIV 
XLV 



XLVI 



XLVII 

XLVIII 

XLIX 

L 



CONTENTS xv 

PAGE 

Ouk Position with Refekence 
to the Orthodox Eastern 

Church 285 

Our Position with Reference 
to the Roman Catholic Church 289 
Conference and Co-operation 
with Protestant Communions . 305 
The Recognition of the Lay- 
man by this Church. . . . 311 
The Way Prepared for this 

Church 320 

The World, the Work, the 
Waste, Co- Workers .... 324 
The Restraint of Power . . 333 
A Conference and Co-operative 

Commission 338 

The Temporary Nature and the 
Mission of Federated Move- 
ments 342 

Federation and Religious Ed- 
ucation 353 

The Price of Consistency . . 363 
The Question of Unity . . 366 
The Vision of the Son of Man 371 



INTRODUCTION 



BY 



The Rt. Rev. David Hummell Geeeb, 
D. D., LL. D., 

Bishop of the Diocese of New York. 

DR. GOODWIN has given us in the follow- 
ing pages a strong and timely word. It 
is positive and forceful but not polemical and 
contentious. He speaks with conviction but not 
with intolerance, and whether or not we agree 
with him we cannot fail to recognize and admire 
his courtesy and fairness towards those who 
differ with him. In this respect, he not only 
sets an example which, in these days of much 
heat and little light both in Church and State, 
it would be well for the rest of us to follow, but 
also strikes the true catholic note and expresses 

xvii 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

or reflects the true catholic mind. For what is 
catholicity? — that very much mooted and much 
disputed word and about which there seems to 
be, as Dr. Goodwin shows, no catholic agree- 
ment. In what does it consist? Not in a fixed 
and rigorous definition or dogmatic declaration 
established once for all. That is the definition 
of the sectary with the seeds of schism in it. 
It is not so much a declaration as a disposition : 
not a disposition to surrender its convictions or 
to hold them lightly, but one which, while adher- 
ing to them, is not delimited by them, but has 
learned the secret, the catholic secret, of how 
to keep and hold without any break or excision 
in it a fellowship beyond them. A recent re- 
viewer has said of Charles Lamb that he was 
certainly never surpassed and probably not 
equalled by any contemporary for understand- 
ing those with whom he did not agree. That 
is the catholic mind, which, if rarely found in 
literature, is still more rarely found in theol- 
ogy and religion or the Councils of the Church. 
It is, however, a type of mind in which the hope 



INTRODUCTION xix 

of the ultimate unity of Christendom resides 
and which should be sedulously cultivated by all 
schools of thought in the Christian Church. 
That is the type of mind reflected in Dr. Good- 
win's treatise, which, while expressing definitely 
and clearly and with no uncertain sound, his 
deep and strong convictions, is written in a 
truly catholic tone and temper. It is a notable 
book, both in what it says and the spirit in which 
it says it, and will well repay a close and careful 
reading. 

David H. Greer. 



t ( 



PAST I 
THE CRISIS AND THE CALL 
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" 



CHAPTER I 
THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 

IN the presence of the great world crisis, 
Christianity and the Christian Chnrch 
stand for judgment. It is asked by many, 
"Has Christianity f ailed !" When asked this 
question by a young student, the president of 
one of our universities answered: "It has 
never been tried.' ' This question cannot be 
answered and dismissed with a "ves" or 
"no." Christianity has succeeded in doing 
many things ; in many things she has deplorably 
failed. That she failed to stem the forces which 
culminated in the present world catastrophe is 
apparent. Yet it is evident that the desires, the 
ambitions, the materialism, the inordinate 

greed, and the will to power, which have com- 

3 



4 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

bined to cause the greatest war of the world, 
are all motives and impulses directly contrary 
to her fundamental principles, and to the Spirit 
and teachings of Jesus Christ. The great war 
is, indeed, the most striking vindication in hu- 
man history of the truth of the Christian con- 
tention. As nothing has ever done before, it 
manifests the necessity for obeying the spiritual 
laws proclaimed by Christ, and of living life 
in the power of His Spirit, if a just and abiding 
peace is to be established among the nations 
of the earth. 

It is well that thinking men should pause and 
carefully consider in what ways, and for what 
reasons, the Christian Church has failed to im- 
press the consciousness of the races at war, and 
the world consciousness at large, with a force 
and intensity sufficient to guide into the paths 
of integrity and peace the desire of the nations, 
and the wills of those who are now working 
their will in devastation, wholesale slaughter 
and mutual destruction. 

The causes for this failure in the Church, in 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 5 

so far as they still inhere in the Church, exist 
there as a tragedy. If, in view of the call which 
now comes to the Christian Church, these causes 
of weakness are allowed to continue to retard 
her influence and paralyse her power, the world 
will, when it pauses to take inventory, condemn 
and despise the Church for her lack of vision ; 
for her impotence, born of pride, prejudice and 
arrogance; for her lack of power because of 
her lack of unity; for having proven recreant 
to her trust; and for having utterly failed to 
speak and exemplify the mind and heart of the 
Christ to the world in the darkest hour of her 
life, and in the day of her deepest distress, and 
of her profoundest need. 

It is the solemn duty of the Christian Church, 
and of all Christian men, to ask the causes of 
the tragic failure of the one force which might 
have prevented this tragedy had it been vital, 
united, and consecrated fully to its Christ-given 
mission to the world. This duty is imperative, 
and must be faced with great sacrificial re- 
nunciation unless we are willing that the causes 



6 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of the Church's failure shall be written in the 
book of doom which will tell future generations 
why suddenly the whole world fabric seemed to 
collapse. It is imperative for the reason, also, 
that we face a future pregnant with the most 
vital and stupendous problems and responsi- 
bilities which have ever challenged the thought, 
and will, and faith of man. 

" WHERE IS NOW THY GOD?" 

Infidelity, skepticism, materialism, heathen- 
dom turn to-day to the Christian Church and 
ask, ' ' Where is now thy God ! ' ' Browning has 
answered, 

''God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world.' ' 

But Zeppelin bombs were not then dropping 
around him out of the blue Italian sky upon the 
ancient glories of Venice. At present all's 
wrong with the world, and God, where is He 
now? The doors of many parts of His heaven 
are closed to Him. By neglect, He is to-day 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 7 

being excluded, here in America, from the minds 
of millions of His children by the ignorance that 
is in them by reason of the entire lack of all 
religious education, both on Sundays and on 
week days. Sectarian strife and ecclesiastical 
bigotry have shut Him out of our public schools. 
Materialism, agnosticism and infidelity have 
banished Him from the laboratories and class 
rooms of many of our most renowned universi- 
ties. 

Greed and covetousness have forced Him out 
of conference and co-partnership relation with 
many of our banking, commercial, and indus- 
trial corporations. It is said they have no 
soul. If the directors of big business fail to feel 
their responsibility to incorporate their souls 
into their business, then corporations have no 
point of contact with God. The exiled God is 
not satisfied. Through His broken laws, and in 
the brutal passions of men, He is uttering His 
protest. Through the cannon's mouth, He is 
appealing for His divine right to be enthroned 
in the hearts of His children, and to govern 



8 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the unruly wills and affections of sinful men. 
With the roar of artillery He would wake the 
slumbering souls of His children, and deafen 
the voice of prejudice and bigotry that keeps 
His Church from being one in its witness-bear- 
ing power, and in its readiness to serve, even 
though, as yet, she cannot become one in formal 
and organic unity. Through the appalling need 
of the world, through the carnage and blood of 
far-scattered battle fields, through the cry of 
fatherless children, through the lamentation of 
widows left desolate, through the pallor of 
death on the faces of the splendid youth who 
lie fresh slain beneath the silent stars, 
through the songs which float from bivouacked 
hosts encamped ready for to-morrow's ordeal 
of slaughter; from hunger and famine, from 
pestilence and death, from souls in their flight 
to Paradise, and from the open gates of Hell 
(for "war is hell"), the voice of God is calling 
to His Church to consider what her neglect, and 
what man's neglect of her and of Him, have 
brought to pass in the earth. 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 9 

THE CALL OF THE NEAR FUTURE 

We cannot tell when over the battle fields 
there will be unfurled flags which will tell that 
the fight is done. The guns will be rolled away. 
Swords, encrimsoned with blood, will be 
sheathed. The mind and the heart of man will 
still pulse and throb. What voice shall speak 
to them? Shall it be the voice of ancient ani- 
mosities ? Shall it be still the voice of the will 
to power! Shall material ambition still call 
most loudly to the nations? Shall memories of 
ravished women and of ruthless devastation 
appeal to the spirit of revenge ? Shall the blood 
of brothers and fathers slain cry aloud for 
vengeance to the childhood of to-day, and to 
the youth of to-morrow ? Shall the nations hear 
no other voices than these ? 

Shall they hear America's voice? What will 
it say to them? Will it be guttural with the 
fat of the gain it has gotten out of the tragedy 
of its brothers over the seas? Shall it be the 
covetous voice of commercialism that shall first 



10 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sweep over the ocean and break upon the deso- 
late and deathly calm of prostrate and impov- 
erished peoples? Shall it be the voice of Shy- 
lock or of Portia that shall pass from our shores 
to ring through the encreped halls of judg- 
ment when the nations shall come at last to face 
their creditors? What will America have to 
say, and what will she have to give in that day? 

Will she stretch out clean hands, and speak 
with a great purity of heart to the nations when 
the day of opportunity comes? 

America must be very clearly told that this 
day of her opportunity will be, also, the day of 
her greatest judgment. The nations will, on 
that day, be prepared, in part at least, to for- 
give her wavering neutrality. They will under- 
stand the perplexities with which her mind 
was surrounded. They will pardon mistakes 
of judgment. But they will be in no humour to 
pardon cupidity. If America goes as a vulture, 
seeking what she may devour; if she goes as 
to a bargain counter of a house which has fallen 
under disaster; if she goes as a merchant with 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 11 

outstretched hands to get more gold out of the 
bargains which she may force by reason of 
human needs and human misfortune, she will 
have then doomed herself to the scorn and last- 
ing contempt of prostrate nations. America will 
then have been weighed in the balances and 
found wanting. She will then have given evi- 
dence of a prostitution of spirit so base that 
perhaps nothing short of the purification of 
the fires of war could purge her own life from 
the dross of selfishness and materialism. 

And what voice shall speak to the heart and 
conscience of America? Is there a power in 
the Christian Church at this crisis moment for 
adequate leadership? Is there a priestly voice 
to call America to the altar of self-sacrifice, that 
she may there make a great renunciation? Is 
there the possibility of a solidarity of life, and 
a practical unity of forces, out of which the 
prophet's voice may call America to a great 
consecration to a Christlike service. If many 
voices are to speak, they must speak as one 
voice. Back of the many voices there must 



12 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

be a consciousness of solidarity of mind, and 
heart, and purpose. If the nations are to be 
built into a deep and abiding consciousness of 
their interdependence; if they are to be bound 
by ties of brotherhood into a lasting peace, the 
spirit of the Prince of Peace must lead them. 
Shall America voice that spirit ? That she is 
armed for defence will make her voice more 
potent. Her own preparedness will give to her 
appeals for brotherhood a clearer note of sin- 
cerity. If she is herself adequately strong, she 
can strongly appeal for the weak. But will 
her preparedness be in her armament alone, 
or in her prepared spirit also? Surely out of 
the open heavens alone can come this spirit of 
leadership. Who shall call it down? Who shall 
point the nation to the vision of those things 
essential to her true greatness, and to her per- 
manent and honourable peace 1 Who shall lead 
America that America may lead the world? 
What has the Christian Church in this land 
said that has counted for anything in bringing 
to bear upon our National Government a com- 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 13 

pelling sense of its duty arid responsibility to 
protest in the name of Christ and humanity 
against the fiendish and brutal Armenian mas- 
sacres, which have stained the earth with per- 
haps more Christian blood than was shed during 
all the persecutions of the Early Church? If 
it does not act, it is because it assumes that its 
constituents do not care. Have we cared? 
What voice, potent to compel protest, has 
spoken? If ever the challenge to speak and to 
help, or else forfeit the claim to be called a 
Christian nation, was made to a people, it was 
made, and is now being made, through the 
martyred, massacred Armenian Christians, by 
allies of civilised and Christianised nations of 
Europe, in the presence of silent and compla- 
cent America, neutral even to the cause of the 
Christ, whose Body we have witnessed tortured, 
without a word of protest in their defenceless 
helplessness. 

The curse and the crime of such silent sanc- 
tion rests upon the Church, made impotent by 
division, more, perhaps, than it does upon the 



14 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

government of the nation, left without Chris- 
tian guidance and a compelling Christian influ- 
ence. 

In spite of the dire failures of the Church, 
the Christ Spirit is still regnant in the Heav- 
ens, and waiting, with infinite patience, to be- 
come embodied and expressed in the life of the 
Church. He waits to lead the way. He needs 
a consecrated Body in which, and through 
which, to speak and to work His will to peace. 
This Body must be one. Some day it may be 
one in its organic and formal unity. This must 
bide the time till more humility of mind pre- 
vails, and when pride and prejudice are less 
rampant in the heart and mind ecclesiastic. 
For this the world in its present crisis cannot 
wait. 

Has the world in its need the right to ask 
and to expect that the Christian Church in 
America, and all over the world, shall respond 
to its call out of the darkness and come to its 
aid! The S. 0. S. call sounds over the seas 
through the storm and the darkness. Shall we 



THE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 15 

stand apart? Shall we be hindered by discus- 
sions as to the regularity of Orders, and the 
validity of Sacraments, by the kind of Bap- 
tism, and questions of Church government, 
from going with one clear voice, and with one 
united purpose, to speak, and to lead and to 
help? United in purpose; in desire; in the 
great consciousness of world mission ; in a con- 
secrated willingness to serve, the Christian 
Church could, in this day of her greatest op- 
portunity, do much to lead America, and 
through America, help to lead the other nations 
of the earth. 

Never before was the tragedy of disunion in 
the Church more appalling than to-day as she 
stands almost impotent in the presence of the 
great catastrophe of the nations. To remain 
out of co-operative unity in the face of this call, 
imperious and appealing, which comes to her 
for moral and spiritual leadership; to remain 
impotent to speak with one consent, when the 
day comes for international reconstruction, and 
the creation of new world ideals, will be crim- 



16 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

inal, and desperately faithless to her divinely 
given mission. 

WHY THE CHURCH IS NOT READY 

It is worth while that we should pause, in the 
face of this vital call, which comes in the pres- 
ence of the world's tragedy, and, in the dawn of 
the world 's crisis of reconstruction, to consider 
how it has come to pass that the Church has 
failed so largely, and why, in the face of her 
greatest opportunity, she stands to-day divided, 
and seemingly impotent for the world task and 
responsibility, which she should, for every rea- 
son, assume. She cannot lead because she is 
divided. And why is she divided! What proc- 
esses of mind have led her into the tragedies 
of her failures, and into her present impotence 
to lead the thought of the world, and to deter- 
mine the international idealism of the future? 

As we review these processes of thought and 
attitudes of mind, it would be well to keep two 
questions constantly before our judgment. 






*£KE CRISIS AND THE CHURCH 1? 

First: Cannot the reasons for our organic 
disunion be surmounted for the sake of a spir- 
itual unity of service and co-operation, and a 
solidarity of spiritual leadership in the pres- 
ence of the crisis that faces us? 

Second: Can we not, as we serve together, 
cultivate a spirit of sympathy and understand- 
ing that will create an atmosphere in which 
we may candidly confer and co-labour in an 
effort to create a comprehensive Church, in- 
clusive and truly catholic in its divine life and 
spirit, and in its outlook towards ultimate or- 
ganic unity? 



CHAPTER II 

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH TO 
IMPERILLED AMERICA 

A NATION is often unconscious of its real 
imminent perils until it is too late to 
avert them. They are generally inherent in 
the life of the nation itself. In ways that are 
insidious, and by the working of forces which 
blur the vision, and dull the national conscious- 
ness, these perils make their approach, and 
win their grip upon national life and character. 
The chief peril is that which comes of forget- 
fulness. It has ever been the fore-runner of 
disaster. 

" Beware,' ' wrote the inspired writer to 
ancient Israel, "Beware that ye forget not the 
Lord thy God. 9 ' The temptation will come with 

18 



THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 19 

the increase of silver and gold. It will creep 
upon you in your hours of ease. It will assail 
you in the days of your luxury and pleasure. It 
will steal upon you in your consciousness of 
your prosperity. In that day, "Beware lest 
thou forget." 

The peril lies in the temptation to material- 
ism. Things take the place of God. In the proc- 
ess of treasure gathering, the needs and the 
values of the soul are lost sight of. Gradually 
the sight of the soul is lost. The senses become 
dominant in their appeal, and fasten conscious- 
ness, and hope and desire and the will upon the 
things that are seen, and faith, unused, be- 
comes atrophied. In the process of gaining the 
world the soul is lost. It is a gradual process. 
Few men sell their birthright at the first sight 
of the mess of pottage. They do not sell out 
until hunger has grown very strong and im- 
perious. The hunger for gold, for fame, for 
success, fed by the call and the cost and the 
intoxication of high living, make the sensual 
appeal that materialises the standards of char- 



20 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

acter building. Honour, and truth, and the 
square deal are imperilled in the presence of 
this ravenous sense of hunger. Virtue is 
blinded, and standards are relaxed in the pres- 
ence of the dominating lure of pleasure; and 
souls fall in the inevitable rebound from 
overstimulated senses, and overtaxed nerves. 
America is imperilled by the immorality which 
grows out of fatigue, and from the weariness 
of pursuit after false gods. 

One is not unmindful of the splendid intellec- 
tual, moral, and spiritual achievements which 
have characterised our nation and people. 
There are many signs that by very many God 
is not forgotten. 

When, however, the contributions made to 
the Glory of God and the public good are an- 
alysed, it is found that generosity of spirit is 
the characteristic of a very small minority of 
the people; and that those also are in the mi- 
nority who consider life a stewardship, and 
time an opportunity for lending to others the 
helping hand. 



THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 21 

To-day, as of old, to the great masses that 
go by absorbed in selfish unconcern of their 
brothers' need, the question is asked, "Is it 
nothing to you all ye that pass by?" Is it 
nothing to you that class distinctions are grow- 
ing more intense, and that gulfs, unbridged by 
understanding and sympathy, are widening be- 
tween man and man? Is it nothing to you that 
materialism is gripping the souls of men and 
throttling the spirit of brotherhood? Is it noth- 
ing to you that great, ill-gotten wealth engen- 
ders great hatred, and that men are combining 
in industrial war against each other and are 
too blind to see that their interests are common 
interests, and that, in the end, capital and labour 
must stand together, or fall together in a fight 
where neither one can win a lasting triumph 
over the other? Is it nothing to you that preju- 
dice and bitterness are engendered between man 
and man, and between class and class, because 
material interests are hardening the hearts of 
men, and blinding their minds so that they can- 
not see afar off? 



22 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

If they could see, they would look backwards. 
They would there perceive ambition and selfish- 
ness and greed and covetousness, prejudice, pas- 
sion, hatred, and revenge, armed with clubs, 
then with iron, then with powder, and then with 
dynamite and poison gases, and aircraft and 
all the implements of hell. If they could see, 
they would look backward and behold the 
corpse-strewn battle fields of the world. Bones 
bleached white and blood and carnage would tell 
of man's inhumanity to man when love and 
brotherhood had become dominated by the will 
to power inflamed by the greed for material 
possession. 

If we could see, we would look forward* 
There on the fields of the future, we would see 
the forces, born from the forgetfulness of God, 
armed, as they always, in the end, do arm them- 
selves for a deathly grip, and a ghastly strug- 
gle. There is no permanent coherence in the 
forces which battle for dominance in the strug- 
gle for material supremacy. They are forces 
at enmity with each other. They set man 



THE MISSION OI 1 THE CHURCH 23 

against man. They have always ended in war. 
By what reason, and for what cause, sKall 
America be exempt? 

Every war which has been fought on this 
continent has had its origin in some question 
growing out of property rights. As one to-day 
feels the pulse of public life, are there signs 
that this malignant fever has been entirely 
cured! As one to-day endeavours to diagnose 
the health of the body politic, are there no signs 
that give warning of a great heat of blood and 
passion, and of the presence of forces disord- 
ered and poisonous, which may, if unchecked 
and unhealed, produce a great eruption? By 
what token may America hope to be exempt 
from the consequences that have always fol- 
lowed from forgetting God? 

The catastrophe may not immediately come. 
It may never come. If it does not, it will be 
because we have learned a lesson from looking 
over the seas, and from listening to the voices 
which come to us from the battles born out of 
the will bent on material power. The battle 



24 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

does not of necessity have to be between nation 
and nation, or between section and section. The 
most dire struggles are sometimes the ones 
which arise among those who had given them 
the chance to be brothers and became en- 
emies. 

Is there no mediator? Surely this is the 
mission of the Christian Church. This is the 
day of her opportunity. To-day she can point 
to the power and the brutality of the forces en- 
gendered out of materialism. To-day she can 
show the inevitable end of selfish ambition by 
pointing to the carnage and torture and dev- 
astation of the battle fields covered with men 
fresh slain. To-day she can call men to pause, 
and ask them to consider the price being paid 
by their customers for those things from which 
we are hoarding gain. The dollars which come 
to us blood-stained and tear-stained, — shall we 
take them? It seems inevitable. It seems nec- 
essary that we should. We have what they 
must have, and what, in the light of all pre- 
vious standards, they have the right to pur- 



THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 25 

chase and to transport, if they can. American 
business men cannot be justly charged by any 
nation now at war as doing injustice in supply- 
ing the demand of those who, not having pre- 
pared for war, must prepare themselves now 
or be conquered by those who prepared before 
the war began by purchasing what they had 
need of in the markets of the world. 

The Church has a mission, however, in view 
of these millions of dollars that are being paid 
for the means with which to kill millions of 
men. 

Europe to-day is stretching to us appealing 
hands. Her sick and wounded are calling to us. 
We hear them in the stillness of the night. 
Above the music of the festive dance, we hear 
them calling. Over the noise of laughter from 
around the costly banquet board, we hear them 
calling. Above the applause of the opera house 
and theatre, we hear voices calling from afar. 
They sound above the din of industry, and 
above the roar of traffic. They cry l ' Come over 
and help us." 



26 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

The papers tell of millions made from muni- 
tion orders and of thousands given to hospital 
appeals. The mission of the Church is to 
arouse the American conscience to correct the 
proportion. 

To-morrow the appeals will become more fre- 
quent, more numerous and more pathetic. 
There will come the cry of the widows and 
orphans of ten or more war-stricken nations. 
They will be asking for bread. They will be 
begging for clothing to protect them from the 
next winter's cold. They will point us to homes 
in ashes, and to brothers and fathers slain. 
They will tell us of children born of brutality. 
They will ask, "Is it nothing to you?" 

The mission of the Church is to prepare the 
heart of America to generous and sacrificial 
response. If ever, since the merciful Christ set 
His Church to be His witness in the world, there 
was need for prayers for a divine benediction 
of power, this is surely the time for such inter- 
cession. If the Church should fail, if America 
should fail, it will be because the forces of 



THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 27 

materialism have so gripped her mind and 
atrophied her heart that they will be prophetic 
of her own certain doom. If it should prove, 
in that coming day of opportunity and of judg- 
ment, that greed and selfishness so dominate 
our national life as to make us stingy and un- 
generous in our response to these cries that are 
now coming, and are sure to come with a more 
pitiable and appealing voice, then as surely as 
the forgotten God still lives, He will, through 
the very forces which have usurped His place 
in our national life, call us to the bitter judg- 
ment of blood. It will not be, it never has been, 
an arbitrary judgment, for God is Love. It 
will be the judgment of natural cause and effect. 
It will be the judgment of the sure and inviolate 
working of the laws of that natural and material 
realm in which those deliberately choose to live 
and die who forget God, and remove themselves 
from the government and control of His merci- 
ful and creative spiritual laws. 

It requires no special and unique prophetic 
gift to enable the Church to fulfill her mission, 



28 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

which is to tell men this: It requires only a 
knowledge of history, and a plain understand- 
ing of the clear revelation which He has given 
of the ways in which natural and material forces 
always work in that darkness which comes when 
man forgets God and turns to worship and seek 
and serve things visible, material and soul- 
enslaving. 

The Church cannot fulfill this mission to 
which she is called in this crisis of the world if 
she herself is fettered by formalism, manacled 
by materialism, and made impotent to speak 
and serve by reason of disunion. 

She must make a supreme sacrifice before she 
can ask it of others with appealing power. -She 
must come to the altar of consecration and 
sacrifice her " pride and prejudice and whatso- 
ever else may hinder her from godly union and 
concord. ' ' She must not bide the time till aca- 
demic interpretations, and theory differences, 
and uncertain and non-essential dogma barriers 
have been settled by schoolmen, and cleared 
away by lengthy investigation and discus- 



THE MISSION OP THE CHURCH 29 

sion. This great business of the King re- 
quires haste. 

Sometimes the best way to make haste is to 
pause in the silence and take inventory. If we 
must go on a swift, far mission, we may well 
store away our impedimenta. We may also 
wisely, for the time being, label and put aside in 
safety vaults many of our long-cherished treas- 
ures. Among these may be some of the ques- 
tions concerning our orders and Church govern- 
ment. We can return to them afterward. Or- 
ders, sacraments, a great consciousness of mis- 
sion, a supreme confidence in Christ, and a 
larger trust in our brother Christian missioner, 
we need to take with us. The theories, interpre- 
tations, the exclusive claims, which divide us, 
and tend to keep us from service mobilisation 
in the emergency call, must be deposited for 
safe keeping until some of the vital world prob- 
lems have been solved, as they cannot be solved 
without the united purpose and concerted voice, 
and without the will to serve made one in Christ. 

That some may be aided in making sacrificial 



30 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

response to this clear call of Christ to His whole 
Church, what is written in the pages following 
is presented with the earnest hope that the pur- 
pose in the heart of the writer will be taken as 
an excuse and apology for what may, through 
mental limitation, be said amiss, in the effort 
made to examine some of the causes of dis- 
union, and in the further effort to point to the 
impelling and appealing need for a closer and 
more vital Christian co-operation, that with 
a common purpose we may enable the Church 
of God in America to guide and help America 
to guide and help the other nations of the 
earth. 



CHAPTER III 
MATERIALISM 

THE dominating power of materialism is 
evident in every realm of thought and 
experience. Materialism may be defined as 
the affirmation of matter, and the forces 
which proceed from matter, and the energies 
directed toward material aggrandisement, as 
being the sole substance and source of power, 
causation, and of creative and constructive en- 
ergy in the universe. It is the denial of a vital 
and conscious force or personality, creative and 
constructive in its operation, in the world and 
in the life of man. It is the denial of any im- 
material part in man or in the universe. It is 
the doctrine of causation and of desire and will, 

which is opposed to spiritism. 

31 



32 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

The materialist is one whose desires, ambi- 
tions, energies and will are directed toward the 
attainment of material things alone, or who 
asserts and teaches that physical domination 
by physical force is the destined end of man 
and of nations. 

This concept of the universe and of man is 
the basis of widely diffused and accepted sys- 
tems of philosophy, religion, ethics and politics. 
It has become the dominating practical philoso- 
phy of the major part of current commercial- 
ism, and of international, political and diplo- 
matic procedure. It is this concept which has 
expressed itself in the creation and upbuild- 
ing of that product which the pride and blind- 
ness of the workmen have named civilisation. 

This is the dominating philosophical and ethi- 
cal concept which lies back of the great world 
war, and which is the cause of it. In one na- 
tion, at least, there is found the candour which 
confesses it. There, in the most dominating 
class in the great social and governmental fab- 
ric, "the will to power' ' has been openly as- 



MATERIALISM 33 

serted as being the end of national ambition, 
and the means to this end. That has been as- 
serted as being moral which aids in the attain- 
ment of this end. Whatever is prejudicial to 
the material growth and power and force of 
empire is immoral. Nietzsche taught that the 
Christian religion was the most immoral of 
all religions because it inculcated sympathy and 
a love for one's enemies, which tended to re- 
strain "the will to power/ ' and to thwart the 
ambition to make the empire with its culture 
idea dominant over the rest of mankind. There 
were many who were disposed to think that 
this philosophy was but the expression of a 
distorted mind which gave vent to its final ma- 
terialistic ravings in the insane asylum of Jena, 
until evidence was given in Belgium, and else- 
where, that the philosophy that the end justi- 
fied the means seemed dominant in the war 
councils of the German Empire. Of course, 
the end not yet having been attained and real- 
ised, it may be impossible, from the viewpoint 
of the materialist, to judge as to the moral value 



34 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of the means. Those, however, whose theories 
of morals and of humanity have another basis, 
and whose philosophy includes the Master's 
law of love and brotherhood, do not have to 
wait until this system finds its " place in the 
sun ,, before they pronounce judgment. They 
feel convinced that the fundamental error and 
inherent falseness of this philosophy is made 
clearly manifest in its methods of procedure, 
entirely regardless of what the distant end at- 
tained may be ultimately shown to be. 

This philosophical concept finds its expres- 
sion in "The Struggle for Law," by Jhering, 
who seeks to substantiate the contention that 
in force alone is to be found the basis and rea- 
son for law, and that law has won its place in 
society through the process of self-defence and 
self-assertion. 

That this materialistic philosophy has not 
been thus publicly and officially accepted by 
other so-called civilised nations does not hide 
from view the fact that other nations engaged 
in that hideous war have sought their power 



MATERIALISM 35 

and attained their material greatness by fol- 
lowing ambitions, and using means no less ma- 
terialistic than those disseminated in German 
philosophical and ethical writings, and openly 
avowed and contended for by the German army. 
Nor are signs lacking to show that the grip 
of this philosophical and ethical materialism 
is fixed with fierce tenacity upon the heart and 
mind of American civilisation. 

It is, of course, possible to assent to the 
fact that, in the consciousness of the nations 
engaged in war, there may exist, and doubtless 
does exist, a certain culture or altruistic ideal- 
ism which it is sought to establish ultimately 
in the nation and on the earth. This intention 
may indeed exist in the national consciousness 
just as in the individual there may exist the in- 
tention of devoting large contributions of ill- 
gotten wealth to the cause of culture and toward 
the alleviation of human misery. There is, 
however, a growing sense of conviction in the 
social, civic and national consciousness that 
this intention proclaimed by an individual does 









36 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

not constitute any moral justification for con- 
ducting sweat shops, and prostituting childhood 
to industrial accomplishment, or for oppressing 
the hireling in his wages. Nor does it justify 
the socialist in seeking to confiscate private 
property, or the anarchist in seeking to destroy 
it, because of some dream of a far-off social 
betterment, which may be by these methods 
secured. There is good reason to fear and to 
expect that the character formed during the 
process of seeking, by brutal means, the will 
to power will not be the kind and quality of 
individual or national character whose dom- 
inance would ever tend to conduce to true cul- 
ture of soul, or to the permanent enrichment 
and elevation of human life. The sincerity 
of the ultimate intention may be fairly judged 
by the nature and kind of means used and jus- 
tified to secure its final expression. 

Before the coming of the Christ, there had 
grown up in Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Eome 
and Greece great material empires where 
wealth, power, pleasure and sensuality were 



MATERIALISM 37 

dominant, and where materialism was regnant. 
One by one these empires declined and fell into 
disintegration and destruction. 

Then there came the One long promised and 
long expected. He stood in the midst of His 
people with a body clothed in the garb of a 
workman, and proclaimed the great spiritual 
background of human life. He spake as never 
man spake. He lived as never man had lived. 
He gave to life new terms of value and new 
standards of measurement. Blinded by ma- 
terialism, poisoned by ambitions for worldly 
power, His people knew Him not. With a ma- 
terially blinded mind they judged Him. With 
a materialistic prejudice they rejected Him. 
With a hatred engendered by the bigotry born 
and nurtured under a materialised ecclesiasti- 
cism they crucified Him. 

Then there dawned upon those who had heard 
Him, and followed Him, and who heard Him 
again speaking the great Gospel of a great, 
conquering love, which the powers of hate and 
death had failed to suppress, a clearer vision 



38 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of Him, and of life and its meaning and purpose 
revealed in Him who had been called through 
death to live as King of life and truth and 
love. 

With the vision of His cross, and in the power 
of His resurrection life, His Church went forth 
to sacrifice and to win dominion over the hearts 
and wills of men. Persecuted by the forces of 
materialism, relying upon the promise and pres- 
ence of Him Who, unseen, dwelt among them, 
and whose Spirit dwelt within, the Church gave 
her witness to the world of her unconquerable 
faith. 

Then, in the presence of the forces and sym- 
bols of imperial materialism, the Church began 
to lose her clear vision power. She drew near 
to the outstretched arm of empire, and began 
to lean upon the arm of flesh. Then she ap- 
propriated this arm, and the sword that was in 
the hand of it. Then, to the forces of material- 
ism, there was added the materialised Church. 

Golden, gilded, and dominantly imperious, 
she asserted her will to power, and with the 



MATERIALISM 39 

sword she had seized, she sought to enforce her 
decrees. 

Still, however, there lingered a light which 
never deserted the lamp, though at times it flick- 
ered and seemed almost to die away. Always 
there were faithful souls who ministered at the 
altar and fanned the waning flame through 
prayer and sacrificial devotion. Thus it hap- 
pened, as Guizot asserts in his "History of 
European Civilisation, ' ' that, amid the dark- 
ness and corruption of mediaeval Europe, the 
one ray of light was that which ever proceeded 
from the flame of truth and virtue which per- 
sisted in lingering in, and shining through, the 
Christian Church in spite of her own material- 
ism and formality. 

The student of ecclesiastical history is, how- 
ever, fully aware of the fact that the Church 
soon became the very imperfect and grossly 
materialised representative of the simple spir- 
itual character and teaching of Jesus of Naz- 
areth. 



CHAPTER IV 
CIVILISATION 

THAT which, men call civilisation has been, 
and is still, often confused with Chris- 
tianity. The two terms are in no sense 
synonymous. They are most largely and dis- 
tinctly contrary, the one to the other. Indeed, 
civilisation, so called, has ever been, and is now, 
composed of far more barbaric than Christian 
elements. The struggle of God to manifest 
Himself through the Church has been marvel- 
lously patient and divinely persistent. Without 
the restraining and constructive power of the 
Spirit's witness and influence through the 
Church, it is impossible to tell to what depths 
of degradation humanity would have fallen. 
It is quite impossible to determine what this 

40 



CIVILISATION 41 

level would have been by pointing to the status 
of barbarian people. Among them we find the 
unorganised and undeveloped primitive human 
instincts, both of brutality and morality. In 
that state of society which we have denominated 
civilisation, we find these instincts and impulses 
developed and most highly organised. 

"Where this development has taken place un- 
der the guidance and direction of materialistic 
education ; where that which is called education, 
without religious and spiritual inspiration and 
enrichment, has moulded the mind; where the 
end of education has been to train the mind to 
dominate matter and make a living, and win 
a fortune ; where the cultivation of mental alert- 
ness and ingenuity has been pursued for the 
sake of amassing wealth and enjoying pleasure, 
and where knowledge, apart from the considera- 
tion of love and brotherhood, has been taught 
as being and giving power, it has come to pass 
that, as an inevitable result, a so-called civilisa- 
tion has been built up which is indeed most 
largely a refined, organised and tremendously 



42 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

potent development of barbarism. Civilisa- 
tion without the restraints and compelling in- 
fluences of spiritual life is more barbaric than 
primitive barbarism. Brutal forces, selfish in- 
stincts, and material ambitions, organised and 
directed by a keen mind, correlated and in- 
corporated by shrewd mentality, used in the 
pursuit of personal or national selfishness, by 
thought and desire and will, which have been 
educated to be efficient, but which have not been 
trained to recognise and respect the rights of 
others, may be named civilisation, but the name 
does not make the product other than it is in 
fact, namely, a gigantic, organised system of 
brutal barbarism. The civilisation which is 
inherently materialised, rationalised, and made 
mentally potent and dominant, has no claim 
whatsoever to be called or considered Chris- 
tian civilisation. It would be as justifiable to 
speak of a sunlit night. 

It was because his own materialism had so 
blinded his vision that Herbert Spencer failed 
to see this, and, therefore, argued against Chris- 



CIVILISATION 43 

tianity, seeking to prove his contention by point- 
ing to the elemental virtues of barbarian peo- 
ple, and comparing what he saw there with the 
debauchery, sensuality, murder, lust and cruelty 
of " Christian civilisation." He failed to see 
that a vast proportion of that which he called 
Christian civilisation is refined and organised 
materialistic barbarism. He failed to see that 
the very system which he compares with bar- 
barism is, because of its materialism, the dead- 
liest foe to the progress and incarnation in hu- 
manity of the spirit of Christ. He failed to see 
that the only fair comparison would be between 
the best barbarian and Jesus Christ, or between 
the highest ideals of barbarian tribes and the 
spiritual idealism of the Gospel of Christ. He 
failed, as we often fail, to see that Christ and 
the Christ spirit are not synonymous with the 
ecclesiastical organisation, which, at times, is 
so materialistic that it hides from view the 
simple truth proclaimed as essential to salvation 
in the great Gospel of redemption. While, in 
many ways, Christianity has put a saving heart 



44 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and hope into civilisation, yet in deed and in 
truth, civilisation, so called, is, and has gen- 
erally been, the material god who blinds men's 
eyes and deadens their ears, so that they neither 
see nor hear the great nearby God, and they 
fail to know the Christ who, unseen and 
rejected, stands among us crowned with 
thorns. 

Time and time again, the priests of His re- 
ligion have been so absorbed in building the 
material temple, and manipulating and defend- 
ing the organisation, and have been so engaged 
in intrenching themselves behind their inherited 
and vested rights, and defending themselves 
against encroachments upon their exclusive 
claims, that the Church, which was sent to be 
the witness of the Spirit, and to protest against 
the dominance of materialism, became herself 
a part of a great materialistic system, in which 
the very priests of Christianity aided, by their 
false emphasis, in putting Christ to open shame 
before the minds of men who, like Herbert 
Spencer, judge Christ's religion by the gross 



CIVILISATION 45 

and petty materialistic and formalistic expres- 
sions of distorted ecclesiasticism. 

It is, however, to be remembered that the 
failure is not wholly, if indeed it is chiefly, 
chargeable to the Church. She has much 
through which to make her message penetrate. 
The indifference engendered by wealth and lux- 
ury and comfort, the neglect of soul culture 
resulting from the ceaseless pursuit of material 
things, the willingness, the supreme determina- 
tion to gain the world regardless of the loss 
of the soul, makes it extremely hard for the 
Church, with a spiritual intent and purpose, to 
find a point of contact between human interest 
and spiritual truth. It is to be borne in mind 
that, when the Christ Himself stood among men, 
they heard Him not, saw Him not, and knew 
Him not. The Church should be very much in 
earnest, and deeply conscious of the necessity 
of being vitally spiritual, but if she would not 
lose courage, she must pray for a divine quality 
of patience and perseverance. 

Is it to be wondered at that, when her pearls 



46 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

are rejected and trampled under foot by civil- 
ised barbarians, she should turn with some en- 
thusiasm of hope to the more elemental and 
less materialised barbarian people and seek to 
show the power of her divine mission in her con- 
tact with the primitive child-like honesty and 
trust and obedience of the uncivilised heathen? 

It is not hard to understand the enthusiasm 
of Bishop Tucker of Uganda, who returned to 
London aglow with the joy of the wonderful 
witness given by his people to the sincerity of 
their simple faith in Christ. One could but 
feel as one listened to the recital of the tokens 
of this people 's sacrificial devotion, that to them 
the revelation of Christ had meant everything, 
and had led them to enthrone Him as King su- 
preme over their lives. 

Except for the danger of being devoured by 
cannibals, the missionary to the dwellers in the 
palatial homes of our so-called civilised lands 
has a far harder task than the missionary to 
more primitive barbarian people. He has a less 
hard and less thick outer surface through which 



CIVILISATION 47 

to penetrate than does he who has to speak to 
the gold-encrusted souls atrophied by luxury, 
living amid the volatile, sublimated and insid- 
ious influences of refined barbarism, and sen- 
sualised materialism. The inspiration which 
comes to him who has the courage to persist 
in seeking to penetrate this hardened crust of 
modern materialism, comes largely from the 
fact that those who come out of this environment 
come with souls made strong from having 
broken heavy and gross chains. The cost of 
emancipation, and the terrible struggle to be 
free, is that which gives to the real Christian 
in the midst of modern materialistic civilisation 
his splendid and far-reaching power of influ- 
ence. Those who know the downward pull of 
so-called civilisation know and appreciate what 
it has cost to climb. The soul made free comes 
to-day into the glory of the life redeemed 
through great tribulation. 

The superficial nature of materialistic 
thought is observed also in the judgment pro- 
nounced against the wisdom of the Church in 



48 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

" sending missionaries to disturb the primitive 
simplicity of life found among many barbarian 
people. ' ' Here again it is not noted that what 
disturbs and distorts and spoils their life is not 
the simple truth revealed by the missionary 
that goes to tell them of God's great love re- 
vealed in Jesus Christ, but the vices and dis- 
tortions of materialised civilisation, which 
pushes in through the door opened by the mis* 
sionary, and which would be opened and en- 
tered by commercialism even though the mis- 
sionary were not the pioneer. 

Before a fair tribunal, Christianity will never 
be judged by the collapse of the civilisation 
which has collapsed because of the presence 
and growth of materialism which repudiated 
the Christian contention, and refused to hear 
and heed the Gospel of sacrificial renunciation, 
or to follow Christ in His call and leadership 
into a life of simple faith, of simple love and 
of trustful obedience and self-forgetful serv- 
ice. 

Prefixing the word Christian to civilisation 



CIVILISATION 49 

may produce confusion of thought, but doing so 
does not produce Christian character. This 
comes to men and nations through a process of 
cross bearing and crucifixion, which the Chris- 
tian Church has not yet succeeded in leading 
civilisation to consent to accept, and which the 
Church, at times, has failed to teach by the 
power of her own example. 

That men may be turned from sacrificing 
others to the sacrifice of themselves for others ; 
that civilisation, so refined and skilled in its 
barbarism, may be made indeed Christian, is 
the gigantic task of the Christian Church. The 
god of this world, the barbarian's god, must 
be dethroned, and Christ must be crowned King 
of kings and Lord of lords. 

The Church, in order to fulfill her mission to 
materialised civilisation, must renounce the 
world and the flesh before she can denounce the 
vain pomps and glories and sensual entice- 
ments of materialism. The chains which bind 
the world cannot be broken by human might 
or human power, but by the * * All Power ' ' prom- 



50 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ised by Christ to His Church, but which she has 
never adequately appropriated. 

Materialism awaits its Master Who will come 
with conquering power in the day dawn of a 
great and simple faith which worketh by love. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SPIRITUAL MISSION OP THE 
CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

KNOWING what was in man, and knowing 
what was in the world that would appeal 
to man, and enslave him, unless he was pre- 
pared to resist, the Christ constituted His 
Church to be the witness of the Spirit, and 
promised, through His Church, to give His 
Spirit that men might know the truth that 
would enable them to overcome the world with 
its material and sensual appeal. 

He gave to the Church the inspiration of His 
own life in its relation to materialism. Know- 
ing that men would question as to the origin 
and destiny of the soul, He said, "I came forth 

from God." "I go to the Father." He said 

51 



52 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of His mission, "The Father hath sent me." 
The purpose for which He was sent He said 
was "to give eternal life" to men that they too, 
who had come from God, might return to Him 
with lives enriched through contact with God 
in their pilgrimage through things material. 

In coming into the world, He chose to come 
simply. The manger was His cradle. His 
home was a workman's cottage. His boyhood 
was spent at the carpenter's bench, in the open 
fields, and in the streets of an humble village. 
His public ministry began in the light which 
came from the open heavens as He prayed. 
He passed into the solitude of the wilderness. 
There He was tempted by the god of this world 
who sought to attach Him to the material sys- 
tem. Before Him passed in review the kingdoms 
of the world, and the glory of them. And He 
asked, shall I accept and seek to use these pow- 
ers of materialism as means for building up 
the Kingdom of God! He considered the terms 
upon which they were offered, and determined 
that He would rather suffer and be free. From 



SPIRITUAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 53 

the wilderness He came to serve men. He went 
about doing good. He had not where to lay 
His head. One day the multitude came and 
would have crowned Him King. He refused 
the crown, and went apart into a solitary place 
to commune with God. Out of the silence He 
came and spake with authority, i ' as never man 
spake.' ' 

He selected chosen witnesses to be with Him, 
and, drawing them aside by the quiet lake, or 
into the mountain solitude, He taught them. 
He told them not to depend on things material. 
They were to seek first the Kingdom of God. 
They were not to lay up for themselves treas- 
ures upon earth. For their means of power 
they were to go often into the solitary place. 
They were unlearned and ignorant men, and 
poor. He gave them a simple and beautiful 
Gospel. It passed into their hearts. It lingered 
there. Afterward, when some of them came 
to write, they remembered how very simply He 
had talked to those whom He met by the way- 
side. They recalled how He turned their minds 



54 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

away from rational speculation and left them 
questioning in the presence of mystery. They 
recalled how He ever penetrated through ritual 
observance, and dwelt upon the spiritual truth 
which lay as the background of phenomena. 
They told how He made the lilies, and fields, 
and the vineyards and the fishermen's nets, 
and the seed sown by the husbandmen and other 
incidents of the commonplace, sacramental of 
the great truths of the Kingdom of God. They 
told how He took them into an upper room and 
gave them there the greater sacrament of His 
own life and death, and recalled His interces- 
sory prayer, and His parting promise of a 
Spirit who should come to guide them into all 
truth. They recalled the agony of prayer in 
Gethsemane, and filled priceless pages with the 
simple record of His passing on to Calvary. 
They tell us that they did not understand. They 
paint the gloom which enveloped them without 
His presence. Then the pages glow with celes- 
tial light, and from them ring the glad notes of 
triumph. 



SPIRITUAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 55 

Again He walks with them, but they know 
Him not, for they are reasoning with Him, and 
with each other, by the way. The silence comes. 
The stars appear. He takes bread and breaks 
it, and as He speaks, they know Him. Then, 
as their minds begin to wonder and to try to 
understand, He vanishes, to come again into 
their midst in the silence of the morning as they 
sit by the lake. They tell how He led them up 
into a mountain and commissioned them to go 
teach and incorporate men into His Body 
through Baptism. He had already told them to 
break the bread in remembrance of His broken 
Body, and to drink of the cup in remembrance 
of His blood outpoured. He does not, in His 
parting commission, re-emphasise this. He 
lifts His hands in blessing and becomes in- 
visible among them. 

All these things and many others they re- 
membered, and, that His Church might know 
its Lord and follow Him, they wrote these 
things down to be the heritage of the Christian 
Church, its character and foundation. They 



56 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

preached to others what they had seen and 
heard and known, and then passed into the 
world invisible, leaving others to be His wit- 
nesses. 

There is no complex system, and no tinge of 
materialism in the story given. The great love 
of God for man stands clearly revealed in His 
incarnation, and the heart of the Christ is, in 
the Gospels, thrown open to the world, and all 
are asked to come and be of His Body who will 
come in simple faith, and follow in the path 
of simple obedience bearing their cross, and 
giving their witness. 

Surely it has not been because of Him or His 
teaching that civilisation has grown materialis- 
tic, and greedy, and full of lust and ambition, 
and has become dominated by the will to power. 
Surely He did not give the inspiration which led 
to the battles of the schoolmen, or to the doc- 
trine of temporal power, for "my Kingdom," 
He said, "is not of this world.' ' Surely He 
cannot be held responsible for the spirit of ma- 
terialism, and of formalism, and of exclusive 



SPIRITUAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 57 

logical interpretation which crept in and domi- 
nated the Church. Surely the Church is gravely 
responsible if, in the light of His life, she puts 
the emphasis upon the wrong things, or puts 
upon rightful things a wrong and disproportion- 
ate emphasis. 

The great crisis has come. Shall not the 
Church pause and take inventory? The meth- 
ods, the emphasis, the organisation, the theories, 
which have dominated her life have failed to 
stem the tide of materialism. It has deluged 
civilisation. It has throttled the human heart. 
It has atrophied human sensibilities. The cries 
of widows and orphans turn neither kaiser nor 
king from the determination to kill as long as 
men and money remain. 

Is it not very probable that something is 
really desperately wrong in the past and pres- 
ent programme of the Church? It is easy and 
costless to lay the blame upon others. It is quite 
possible to charge the impotence of the Church 
to the schism of others, and forget the arro- 
gance and bigotry that caused them to seek 



58 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

spiritual freedom. It is easy to lay the impu- 
tation of disloyalty to others who failed to see 
the truth as we formulated it, unmindful of the 
fact that we may have formulated theories in the 
past to which we ourselves would not to-day 
subscribe. It is easy to blame those who de- 
parted from confessions of faith and articles 
of religion in days long gone, forgetful that 
to-day these articles and confessions are by 
ourselves side-tracked or repudiated. Shall we 
repudiate those who rejected in other days what 
to-day we reject! That it is we who reject the 
articles and confessions to-day does not prove 
that they were any more infallibly true when 
they were by others rejected because their con- 
sciences could not, in days gone by, give to these 
iron-clad tests of faith the assent of candid and 
honest minds which to-day we cannot give. 

Is it not quite possible that, by magnifying 
at one time the indispensable value of interpre- 
tations and theories afterward by us repudi- 
ated, and by insisting upon contentions and 
dogmas that to many thousands of spiritual 



SPIRITUAL MISSION OP THE CHURCH 59 

men are not regarded as essential to salvation, 
that the Church has made and is making the 
impression upon the world that she has lost the 
consciousness of her mission to witness to 
Christ, and to the simple faith and glorious 
redeeming love proclaimed in the simple mes- 
sage of His Gospel? At times the Church seems 
panic-stricken. She impresses the world with 
the idea that she has lost confidence in her- 
self. Around some ancient bulwark of logical 
interpretation, behind some fort of catholic 
sanction, she intrenches herself. To the world 
she says, If this falls, I fall. The world wonders 
just why this logical deduction is after all essen- 
tial to its salvation. It comes to question the 
truth of the claim that this defended bulwark 
is the critical salient which must be held in order 
to enable the Church to solve the problems aris- 
ing out of the world crisis. 

Men, in larger numbers than ever before, are 
gathering in their clubs and discussing the re- 
lation of the Church to the world crisis. They 
are asking why is she fighting over shibboleths? 



60 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

They are asking why is the lack of fellowship 
and co-operation with such stupendous, vital 
problems to be solved? They are taking down 
books which they have not been accustomed 
to read, and, as they turn the pages which tell 
of Bloody Articles, and test interpretations, and 
scientific and religious controversies, and bap- 
tismal regeneration, and predestination, and 
eternal punishment, and heathen damnation con- 
tentions, which made heaven and earth lurid 
with the fires of heated debates, the men who 
think are asking ' ' How long, Lord, how long' f 
will the ecclesiastical mind persist in contending 
for theories and interpretations which are not 
essential to salvation, and which keep men from 
co-operating in this day of the world's crisis 
and of the Church's greatest opportunity? 

These questions are being asked. They are 
reasonable questions and fair. The men who 
ask them are coming to see that it is rationalism 
and materialism which has collapsed in this 
crisis of human history. They are coming to 
see, and are beginning already to say that the 



SPIRITUAL MISSION OP THE CHURCH 61 

Church, having failed to make her witness to 
the spiritual heard and heeded by men and na- 
tions, stands to-day before the judgment bar 
of God and of man. What will she plead? What 
will she confess! What will she determine? 

One can but wonder what the Master is try- 
ing to say to His Church to-day. Unseen He 
walks in our midst. He needs a vital, conse- 
crated Body through which to express and re- 
veal Himself to the world. He needs a human 
tongue through which to speak, and human 
hands with which to heal and help. Through 
materialism He cannot speak. Through His 
Church materialised, He cannot speak to ma- 
terialism. By our failure to perceive and know 
and understand, we leave Him voiceless. By 
our divisions we leave Him almost impotent 
to help. By our pride and conceit and stub- 
bornness, we leave Him filled with a sorrow 
which is unutterable. 

In this time of crisis we hear Him say, "Lo I 
come." But can we hear Him say, "A Body 
hast thou prepared for me?" He needs a Body 



62 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

presented as a living sacrifice and, through sac- 
rifice, made one in spirit and in truth. He 
needs the human mind transformed by the re- 
newing of the spirit. He needs a great human 
heart consecrated to love. He needs a Body 
which shall be the living temple of His living 
spirit. He will make it one, if it is ever thus 
presented to Him. 

It may be that the great world crisis will com- 
pel His Church to bear its cross and follow 
Him over Calvary to unity. When she can say, 
"I am crucified with Christ," then, but not till 
then, will the world hear the voice of Him 
who is waiting and longing to speak His mes- 
sage of peace and love and power, that the 
Father's children may all be made brothers. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS* 

WE cannot to-day do the things that we 
would. The impulses, the desires, even 
the will to serve stand almost impotent in 
the presence of a world catastrophe. "We 
have organised and systematised the will to 
material gain and worldly power. The instru- 
ments of production, the means for transporta- 
tion, the methods for transacting the work of 
the world, are unified and correlated and are 
almost perfect in their efficiency. Secular edu- 
cation has been graded and made adaptable to 
every need of man save the needs of the soul. 
We have systematised our theology. Doctrine 

* This chapter was used as a part of an address made to 
the Laymen's Missionary Convention, in New York City, April 
10th, 1916. 

63 



64 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

follows doctrine in ordered and logical sequence 
in our scholarly books on dogmatics. Our 
liturgy is as harmonious and beautiful as a 
poem, and our churches are, in many instances, 
poems in stone. 

For a year and a half the cry of the world's 
need has swept over the ocean to America, and 
we have found no way to make anything which 
approaches or suggests an adequate response. 
Individuals, here and there, have given gen- 
erously. Individuals, in many instances, have 
trained souls. As a people we have done noth- 
ing and attempted nothing. "We stand idle and 
impotent. 

The impulses and desires of selfishness are 
organised. The heart of our humanity is in a 
state of moral and spiritual chaos. There is no 
voice which speaks with a spiritual authority 
to the national conscience, and no means have 
been provided for gathering together the latent 
forces of unselfishness, of generosity, of kind- 
ness and benevolence which exist unorganised 
and unexpressed in the heart of the American 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 65 

people. The masses are exploited by organised 
selfishness. The masses are, to a great extent, 
organised for selfish exploitation. The masses 
of our American people are, however, to-day 
missing the greatest opportunity which ever 
came to a people of any nation to be made 
conscious of the duties and responsibilities of 
human brotherhood. The opportunity for 
creating a sense of moral and spiritual soli- 
darity is offered, as it was never before offered 
to a people, and so far absolutely nothing com- 
mensurate with the opportunity has been at- 
tempted. 

The nation cannot pass through this crisis 
and, in the end, be left upon the moral plane 
where she stood at the beginning of the world 
war. She must of necessity either ascend or 
descend morally and spiritually. The law to 
which Bishop Butler called attention, that the 
human mind and heart are atrophied and de- 
based by feeling emotions which are unex- 
pressed, is immutable. America is beginning 
to get accustomed to the cry of need and to the 



66 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sight of appealing tragedy to which she makes 
no adequate effort to respond. We are in dan- 
ger of measuring our generosity by the num- 
ber of appeals we hear, and the strength of the 
emotions we have felt, rather than by the sacri- 
fices we have actually made to help the world 's 
great need. Unless the national conscience is 
aroused to a point that will lead the national 
will to make a sacrificial response, America will, 
in the end, have been hardened and debased by 
having viewed with irresponsive selfishness the 
sorrow and need of her suffering brothers be- 
yond the seas. 

The spectacle is pathetic and appalling. It 
is pathetic because it gives evidence of the im- 
potence of the institutions and forces which 
should naturally voice and express and work 
in this crisis the will of God. An unprepared 
Church stands in the presence of a world crisis. 
Among all her age-long systems, there is not 
found to-day one that is adequate for leader- 
ship, and for a constructive and statesmanlike 
programme of correlating and making operative 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 67 

the divine impulses in the heart of the people. 
It is appalling because of the fact that among 
all the nations upon earth to-day America most 
largely needs to seize and make use of the op- 
portunity to consolidate the moral and spiritual 
impulses of her people. She, of all others, pre- 
eminently needs to create and develop the forces 
of a higher national unity. This need is pre- 
eminently hers because of the heterogeneous 
and hyphenated nature of her population. From 
every nation under the sun, people have flocked 
to her shores bringing with them various im- 
pelling ideals and impulses. Should the time 
ever come when the nation will be called to act 
as a unit, there will then be made apparent the 
appalling tragedy of not having used the op- 
portunity which these hours afford for bind- 
ing the people into a common purpose in a 
united effort to serve the needs of others. From 
America's view-point, the success of this effort 
would not be measured by the sums of money 
contributed but by the number of those who, in 
response to a clear call, would unite to serve 



68 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

others. This union of a noble intent, this soli- 
darity of moral and spiritual purpose, would 
give to America her most efficient and potent 
preparedness in the event of either peace or 
war. 

What doth it profit a nation if it gains treas- 
ures from the whole world's need, and in re- 
sponse to the cry of the world's deepest need, 
turns an irresponsive ear, and listens with a 
deadened soul? What will it profit this nation 
if it organises its mind and its will to gain, and 
through a great national indifference, selfish- 
ness and impotence, dies at last of a degen- 
erated and poisoned heart? 

To-day the mind of the nation is fixed upon 
force. It is counting its ships, its guns, its 
forts, and its soldiers. It is counting its dollars. 
The nation is weighing itself. The nation needs 
to do this. But in this alone the nation will 
not find its preparedness. In these things, when 
taken alone, are found the seeds of a nation's 
doom. Unless a nation be possessed of spir- 
itual treasures worth saving, and worthy to 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 69 

be given, she cumbers the earth, and impedes 
the onward march of God. Of such nations it 
is written in the book of destiny that their days 
are numbered because, when weighed in the 
balance of God's unrelenting judgment, they 
are found to be lacking in the elements essential 
to personal and national permanence. 

The Christian Church stands to-day in the 
presence of organised greed, covetousness and 
materialism in national life made incoherent 
because of its unorganised soul, and disorgan- 
ised moral and spiritual impulses. The Chris- 
tian Church stands in the presence of this 
crisis herself disorganised, and, in some in- 
stances, contentious over interpretations, and 
fighting over shibboleths. 

She claims to be the Body of Christ. She is 
His Body. But her chains are not His. They 
bind Him. They throttle Him. They make it 
possible for the world to crucify Him afresh. 
As of old, His cross was set up by Caesar, but 
his chains were forged by orthodoxy made blind 
by pride and prejudice. Sometimes it would 



70 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

seem that the Church, loved the chains forged 
by its own logic better than she loved the Body 
of His humiliation and sacrifice. Sometimes 
it would seem that the Church had become ob- 
sessed with the idea that she was called to 
manufacture unity by building up a logical 
system and creating a form and mould in which, 
because of its antiquity and symmetry, the 
Spirit of unity must of necessity dwell, forget- 
ting that God has ever built for Himself in the 
world, and in man, a Body as it has pleased 
Him, when His Spirit was allowed to have free 
course, that He might glorify and unify the 
Body by working from within the consecrated 
shrine of His own chosen dwelling place. 

The crisis calls us to set Christ free. In this 
hour we should pray for vision to discriminate 
very clearly between ecclesiastical shackles and 
the flesh and blood of His living Body. The 
chains which delimit the freedom of His Spirit, 
and make it possible for the world to crucify 
afresh its Lord of life, must be stricken from 
His body. The world greatly needs Him. 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 71 

America is slowly but consciously becoming en- 
slaved because to-day there is no visible me- 
diator, no one to speak to her conscience, no one 
to gather her children together, no one to en- 
fold them in a great saving purpose to help the 
world 's need, no one to save. And yet invisible 
He stands in His visible Church. Here to-day, 
as there in the long ago, He can do no mighty 
works because He is bound by our unbelief, 
shackled, as was the Word of God of old, by 
our traditions, and chained by the delimiting 
logical formalism and narrow dogmatism of 
schools of thought in Churches which seek to 
atone for their narrowness by prefixing to their 
Christian name terms which imply an exclusive 
orthodoxy. 

The crisis calls us to re-examine the grounds 
upon which this Church bases its claim to ex- 
clusiveness. It calls every Church to look back 
over the path of its past life and note the proc- 
esses of its departure from the ideal of spirit- 
ual and corporate unity. Above all things, the 
crisis calls for sacrifice. It pleads for unity in 



72 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

spiritual purpose and in spiritual essentials. 
It points to millions scattered as sheep with- 
out a shepherd. It bids us listen to the clank- 
ing chains of materialism by which they are 
being fast bound and enslaved. It asks if we 
cannot voice the nation's need, the nation's 
hope, the world's pathetic cry, and call the im- 
pulses to help, which lie latent in the hearts of 
millions, into a united purpose, and into a ra- 
tional expression of brotherliness. It asks for 
Christian co-operation. America's peril pleads 
for the inspiration which Christian unity of 
will and purpose would to-day give to the life 
of the nation. 

The Church has not trained itself for such a 
service of giving as the world is trained for the 
purpose of getting. The means through which 
material ambition works its will have been cre- 
ated as a result of a continuity of consciousness 
and application with regard to selfish gain, and 
with reference to the relation of ambition to 
things material. The means for expressing 
the soul have not been created because of the 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 73 

lack of continuity in our consciousness of our 
divine and human relationships. The spirit- 
ual emotions and aspirations have been either 
too exclusively personal, or else too evanescent 
to register themselves in a deep and abiding 
and constructive social and national spiritual 
conscience. The crisis, therefore, finds us un- 
prepared. A sense of vague bewilderment 
dazes the mind as it endeavours to think out a 
way to unify and express the benevolent dispo- 
sition and latent emotions which lie unexpressed 
in the heart of the masses of the American peo- 
ple. A feeling of hesitancy shackles the will to 
serve. The mind is dominated by the conscious- 
ness of our moral and spiritual unprepared- 
ness. As a nation we are in grave danger of 
failing to do anything which will represent the 
national conscience because we fear that a great 
nation-wide endeavour could not be adequately 
voiced and expressed. It were, however^ bet- 
ter for the nation to fail in a great spiritual 
undertaking, than to succeed in doing the small 
service which will result from the contribu- 



74 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

tions made by a limited number of individuals 
who happen to be touched by special and spas- 
modic appeals. Though these gifts may be gen- 
erous, and in some instances munificent, they 
do not represent the masses of the people, nor 
do they express the national consciousness, nor 
do they register the response of the national 
conscience. 

The crisis imperatively demands that we en- 
deavour, through a great sacrifice and conse- 
cration, to give to the Christ a voice through 
His Church that shall call the masses of our 
people into a unity of service to help supply 
the need of to-day and the greater needs which 
will voice themselves on the morrow. 

If objection is made that gifts could not be 
made by America during the war to nations 
in need without releasing money in these na- 
tions for the uses of war; if it be objected 
that the distribution now, or during the war, of 
a national fund would arouse contention and 
animosity; then the crisis of to-day could be 
used as the inspiration of a national endeavour 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 75 

to raise now and during the progress of the 
war a fund for helping to reconstruct and re- 
habilitate the people who will need many mil- 
lions when the war is done to enable them to 
tie together again the broken cords of personal 
and national life. 

A political platform is, in a few weeks, im- 
pelled into the consciousness of the American 
people. An appeal for armament preparedness 
is voiced through various and divergent institu- 
tions to the heart and mind of the nation. The 
appeal of God, which is the appeal of human 
need to the human heart, finds everything or- 
ganised save the means to make that appeal 
heard, and to gather into one the willingness 
to help. The opportunity to unify the heart of 
the nation's life through a great endeavour to 
serve the world's need, the opportunity to unify 
the higher, the deeper consciousness of civic 
and national responsibility is the crisis oppor- 
tunity of the Christian Church. 

In every city, in every hamlet in America, 
those who know and love the merciful and 



76 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

compassionate Christ should unite in some way 
to give voice to the heart of love and pity which 
to-day weeps over the tragedy of the world. 

This endeavour might be launched by the 
Laymen's Missionary Movement and com- 
mended by them to the Federated Churches of 
Christ in America and extended to other organi- 
sations outside the Christian Church, or it 
might be started by the action of the General 
Convention or Assembly or Conference of some 
branch of the Christian Church, and co-opera- 
tion asked from other branches of the Church. 

The promise of Christ that the gates of hell 
should not prevail against His Church, implied 
a promise that His Church should some day pre- 
vail against the gates of hell. The Church, 
however, which in her pride boasts "I am rich 
and have need of nothing' ' may hear the Mas- 
ter say, ' l Thou hast a name that thou livest and 
art dead; strengthen the things which remain, 
that are ready to die." "Bemember whence 
thou art fallen, and repent, and do thy first 
works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 77 

and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, 
except thou repent.' ' 

The god of this world, and the God of Love, 
both are saying to America to-day, " Behold I 
have set before thee an open door." Through 
the door opened by the god of this world, the 
trains of commerce are rushing laden with mu- 
nitions of war, and returning laden with gold. 
Through it, the organised forces of material- 
ism are passing in serried ranks with their eyes 
fixed on the golden gain which lures them on. 

Through the door opened by the God of Love 
comes the cry of millions in need. By this open 
door stands the divided, shackled Church, dis- 
cussing ancient claims, contending for the right 
of precedence in the procession to minister to 
fast dying men, disputing as to the vestments 
to be worn in the funeral obsequies of nations, 
and as to the terms upon which souls, passing 
into the invisible beyond, are to be given the 
Bread of Life and the assurance of forgive- 
ness. 

It is time for the procession to pass through 



78 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the open door bearing the garnered gifts of mil- 
lions in the slavery to selfishness to millions in 
need of medicine and daily bread. It will be 
time to stop longer and discuss the claims of 
the succession when the procession shall have 
returned from its mission through the open 
door to help bind up the bruised and bleeding 
heart of the nations. 

Millions of our Father's children, naked and 
cold, sick and hungry, and dying faster than 
men have ever died before, stretch out to Amer- 
ica appealing hands. Shall America make a 
national response? The nations, when the war 
is done, and a calmer judgment prevails, will 
recognise that comparatively few institutions 
and individuals in this country have made large 
profits from the war. They will perceive, what 
will doubtless be apparent, that as a nation our 
economic loss has been far greater than our 
economic gain. If in that day of judgment, 
when great hatreds and bitter resentments shall 
tend to pervert the judgment of the nations, it 
shall be recognised that, while individuals in 



THE TRAGEDY OF UNPREPAREDNESS 79 

America have in many instances grown rich 
by reason of this world tragedy, that, neverthe- 
less, the American people, in response to a na- 
tion-wide appeal, have shown a disposition to 
be brotherly and compassionate, then the judg- 
ment against the nation will be one of which 
we will not be ashamed. It will be a judgment 
like that held of America to-day in China as 
a result of the return of the Boxer indemnity 
fund. 

This is the open door of opportunity set be- 
fore the Church and the nation. What response 
will the Christian Church make? What capac- 
ity of leadership will she show? What sacri- 
fices will she be willing to endure? 

What will be the attitude of the Episcopal 
Church in this co-operative endeavour? The 
value of "the succession,' ' which many empha- 
sise as essential and restrictive, will be meas- 
ured by many, if not by the Master, by the 
place it takes in the procession through the door 
opened by this crisis in the history of the 
world and in the life of the Church of God. 



PART II 

ECCLESIASTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 
FORM AND SPIRIT 

"The Body without the Spirit is dead." 

"And they took Jesus and bound Him.'* 

"Though we be tied and bound with the chain 
of our sins, yet let the pitifulness of thy great 
mercy loose us; for the honour of Jesus Christ." 



CHAPTER VII 
THE PURPOSE PREVIEWED 

THROUGH the pages following, some of the 
processes of mind which have contributed 
to make the Christian Church unprepared to 
meet the crisis, and make use of her greatest 
opportunity, will be considered. The Church 
once for all time founded by the Christ, has 
become divided and encrusted and made incom- 
petent for her world mission. She must of ne- 
cessity face the task of readjustment and of 
reconstruction. She must be led to a new and 
higher point of view. She must follow her 
Master up to the mount of transfiguration, and 
talk with Him of the decease which she must 
accomplish on Calvary, if she would rise to the 
glory of communicating His resurrection life 

83 



84 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and power to the world, which, through Him 
alone, can be saved. 

She must examine the measure of her empha- 
sis, and ask if it has always been placed upon 
things vital and essential. She must consider, 
in view of the call which comes to her through 
the open door, the grounds and claims which 
prevent co-operative endeavour, and withhold 
Christian communions from applying the po- 
tency of a vital common faith to the moral dis- 
orders of the world with a corporate solidarity 
of high moral and spiritual purpose. She 
would do well to remeasure and resurvey the 
bounds of her comprehensiveness, and ques- 
tion as to the extent of her inclusiveness of 
the purpose of God within the bounds of her 
exclusive claims. After all it is a question of 
balance, and of emphasis, and of a right judg- 
ment in all things. Before all is the necessity 
for prayer and penitence. 

We have made mistakes. We have trusted 
the logic of our delimited minds, and have 
leaned too often upon the knowledge that puf- 



THE PURPOSE PREVIEWED 85 

feth up and produces pride and arrogance, 
rather than upon the love that buildeth up the 
Body of Christ. We have relied upon the arm 
of flesh, and trusted in things material. We 
have gendered controversies by the vain en- 
deavour to dictate exactly how intellectual be- 
lief should accept the mystical union between 
the invisible Spirit and the form of its mani- 
festation in Holy Baptism, in the Holy Com- 
munion, in Biblical inspiration, and Orders, and 
in the mystery of the Divine Incarnation and 
Resurrection. In every instance it has been the 
material, the human, the visible side, of the mys- 
tery that has mastered and perverted the mind. 
In every instance through theological and ec- 
clesiastical controversy, intellectual belief in 
theories of interpretation has sought to sup- 
plant and usurp the place of simple faith which 
unites the personal soul of man with the per- 
sonal Christ. 

During the centuries through which she has 
passed, the Church has built barriers which have 
separated Christians from godly union and con- 



86 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

cord. We live behind them. We cannot see 
each other. We do not understand each other. 
We distrust each other. 

The world crisis calls us. We refuse to 
march together because of questions of prece- 
dence. We decline to co-operate because of a 
certain distrust in our position, because of a 
fear that a thing we claim as divine will be com- 
promised by association with those who, in 
ways other than those we cherish, are follow- 
ing Christ, and serving the world in the power 
and witness of His Spirit. Ecclesiasticism 
must not be allowed to enchain the Christ. 

In what shall be said, the purpose will always 
be to do respect to every honest conviction, and 
to recognise the sincerity of mind and heart of 
every seeker after truth. The saintliness of 
character seen in men of many and varied 
schools of thought, and in the various com- 
munions of the Church, gives evidence of a pres- 
ence and power which is divine, which tran- 
scends the limits of logical barriers and ec- 
clesiastical exclusiveness, and justifies the plea 



THE PURPOSE PREVIEWED 87 

which is made in the chapters which follow for 
a review of positions arrived at by the logical 
process, and for an inclusive and comprehensive 
Church, and for a co-operation of Christian 
people for upbuilding the spiritual order of the 
world. 

The conviction is cherished that the divine or- 
der of the Church will not suffer from a co- 
operative endeavour to correct and cure the 
moral disorder of the world. Where Christ 
calls through the thousand-voiced needs of a 
world prostrate, impotent, dying in darkness, 
and crushed beneath the weight of collapsed 
materialism, we cannot suffer loss of anything 
essential to faith and order if we follow Him, 
in the company of others who also hear and 
make answer to His call and command to go 
teach the nations and baptise them with power 
that the kingdoms of this world may become 
the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
Christ. 

As we note the confusion and discord, and 
consider the unhappy divisions which have re- 



88 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

suited from the effort to bound the compre- 
hensiveness of faith, and the inclusiveness of 
the Church by the use of reason and the proc- 
esses of logic; as we note the results of seek- 
ing to fix the limits of God's covenanted mer- 
cies by the conclusions of the finite mind ; it be- 
comes apparent that serious errors have been 
made which need to be corrected. The necessity 
for considering the relation between ecclesiasti- 
cism and Christianity becomes also apparent. 
And in view of our failure to find a way to vis- 
ible organic unity by the use of the methods 
which have been pursued, the question arises: 
may it not be wise for the Church to begin to 
place the major emphasis upon the spirit, rather 
than upon the form, of unity, and seek to find 
and make use of the approaches to unity which 
start from the open door to closer fellowship, 
a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy! 
May it not be that the spirit of unity will come 
to live in us more largely, and build up the Body 
into visible organic unity in a way that shall 
please Him, if we begin to walk more closely 



THE PURPOSE PREVIEWED 89 

with others who follow Him in the effort to es- 
tablish and extend the Kingdom of God, and to 
prepare the way for the rule and guidance of 
the Spirit of Life and Love and Unity! 



CHAPTER VIII 
LOGIC AND CATHOLICITY 

HUMAN logic has proven a poor prop to 
the catholicity of the Church of God. It 
has been the chief instrument in promoting sec- 
tarianism and schism. By its aid, every propo- 
sition and dogma that has been set forth has 
been established to the satisfaction of those 
who stood sponsors for it. By it, definitions, 
inadequate to comprehend the truth, have been 
put forth, and the scope of truth and of divine 
life, in its expression and revelation, have been 
delimited. By it, God has been reasoned into 
tribal limits, and then, by the tribe, has been 
reasoned into the confines of the sect, then, 
by the sect, He has been reasoned out of the 
covenant relationship with the rest of mankind. 

90 



LOGIC AND CATHOLICITY 91 

Logical bulwarks have ever been the defence of 
bigotry, exclusiveness and narrow sectarianism. 
Men have ever been prone to forget that, as 
temples made with hands cannot contain Him, 
even so can He not be contained in, and cir- 
cumscribed by, definitions and dogmas, or by 
the terms of ecclesiastical polity. He ever 
overflows the channels which men survey, map 
out, charter and proclaim as exclusive means 
through which the divine life is to be communi- 
cated. Beyond our fullest and most compre- 
hensive thought, there is ever an unexpressed 
fulness of God. The Eternal One has persist- 
ently refused to be confined within the dogmas, 
terms and systems which, through the logical 
process, men have decreed in order to circum- 
scribe His Grace, and through which they have 
sought to appropriate to themselves an exclu- 
sive claim to His special and covenanted mer- 
cies. Into the open heart of humanity, through 
the open door of personal faith, His life has 
ever come, according to His own will and cove- 
nanted promise, and in coming has made those 



92 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

who received His Spirit partakers of His di- 
vine nature. 

The Church may some day break away from 
the narrow confines of its logical and delimited 
catholicity, and become sufficiently inclusive to 
embrace all those who are embraced in the Body 
of Christ through the baptism of incorporation 
into His life, and who, through His spirit, re- 
veal His living and abiding presence. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE INTENTION AND EXTENSION OF 
THE CHURCH 

WHILE, with a zeal that has not always 
been attended with reverence and hu- 
mility, but which has often been attended by 
arrogance and the self- sufficiency of a vast ig- 
norance, the Church has often in its past history 
applied false logic to forge binding fetters and 
restraints upon the liberties of the souls of 
men, she has all too frequently failed to ob- 
serve the very fundamental principles of logic 
itself. 

While the logical process may, and frequently 
does, lead to false conclusions by reason of the 
finite and incomplete, and therefore inadequate 
conceptions of God, and of spiritual truth, 

93 



94 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

which are stated in the premises, yet, the great 
fundamental principles of logic are essentially- 
true, and when violated in the thought-processes 
of men, the expression of truth becomes of ne- 
cessity inadequate and incomplete. The claims 
made of catholicity are frequently seen to have 
been vitiated and overthrown by reason of the 
fact that, even while endeavouring to establish 
certain contentions, by what seemed to be a sure 
logical process, the fundamental principles and 
abiding maxims of logic were overlooked ; which 
has resulted in the fact that the logical conclu- 
sions reached stand contradicted, in the claim 
they make, by the logical principles and funda- 
mental maxims of truth which have been vio- 
lated or unobserved during the reasoning and 
constructive process. Thus the constructive 
process proves destructive to the very cath- 
olic claims which they sought to estab- 
lish. 

The law of thought that "the minimum of 
intension is the maximum of extension, while 
on the other hand, the minimum of extension 



INTENTION AND EXTENSION 95 

is the maximum of intension, 9 '* furnishes an 
example and illustration of what happens when 
the logical process is used to prove the fact 
that a certain superadded ecclesiastical dogma, 
or theory, is of divine authority, or of ancient 
and universal sanction, and must, therefore, be 
received as an essential note of the Catholic 
Church, or be accepted as a necessary article 
of the Catholic faith, or be assented to as a 
condition precedent to loyal membership in the 
Catholic Church. 

These superimposed dogmas, ceremonies and 
decrees add to the intensive notes of the 
Church ; they, however, limit the extensive hold 
of the Church upon the thought and faith of 
men. It was just this that the Christ charged the 
Jews with having done. "Ye have made the 
Commandments of God of none effect by your 
traditions, teaching as the doctrines of God the 
commandments of men. ,, (St. Mat. xv, 6, 9.) 
Having identified these intensive notes, which 
had been added and made binding by tradition, 

* "Theory of Thought," Noah K. Davis, p. 36. 



96 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

with the law and revelation of God, their church 
became so delimited in their own conception of 
it that it was not extensive enough to embrace 
Christ and His apostles, or to comprehend, or 
include, their teaching, and they accused Him 
of being a heretic and crucified Him, and per- 
secuted and killed, as they could, His followers. 
This was the charge made by the continental 
and English reformers against the Church of 
Rome. It was pointed out that, by her decrees 
and superadded doctrines and ceremonies, 
Rome had made the Church more and more in- 
tensive ; that is, its notes, and distinctive attri- 
butes had been increased. It was doubtless 
reasoned that these notes would enrich the life 
of the Church and increase its power. It was 
doubtless reasoned, also, that each new doctrine 
added could either be proven from the teaching 
of the Scriptures and the ancient Fathers, or 
else it was logically reasoned that their author- 
ity, as universally binding, rested upon the logi- 
cally proven right of infallible popes and in- 
fallible councils to decree dogmas to be held 



INTENTION AND EXTENSION 9? 

essential, which to deny would be heresy, and 
which to repudiate would be schism. 

The Church failed to foresee that the thought 
of subsequent generations might not be of a 
nature to be included within the reach of the 
Church whose extensive catholicity was gradu- 
ally being delimited by each superadded dogma, 
established as true, or judged expedient, by the 
logical working of the ecclesiastic mind. It 
failed to perceive that the liberated mind would 
be more extensive than the Church, which they 
were making by each dogma more intensive, and 
thus less and less extensive in its scope and 
inclusive capacity. The time, however, came 
when others saw it. 



CHAPTER X 
THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE SYLLOGISM 

THE syllogism, as it represents the reason- 
ing process, and when it is used for the 
purpose of formulating and expressing divine 
truth, should be conceived in reverence and born 
in humility; for, as Samual Coleridge says: 
' 'there is small chance of truth at the goal 
where there is not childlike humility at the 
starting post."* About the syllogism there 
should ever be the consciousness of the finite- 
ness of human thought. It should breathe the 
atmosphere of God's transcendent life when 
stating the fact of His immanence. It should 
beware of conclusions which set limitations 
upon God, and should ever doubt both the 

* < < Aids to Reflection, > ' p. 182. 

98 



ATMOSPHERE OP THE SYLLOGISM 99 

wisdom and truth of a reasoning process which 
ends with binding Christ and the Eternal Spirit 
to conform to, and be restrained by, the conclu- 
sions at which human reason arrives. Before 
the conclusion is sent on its journey to meet the 
problems of life and to help guide the pilgrim- 
seeker after truth; before it is sanctioned by 
authority, and incorporated into the system of 
vital truth, it should look with far-reaching vi- 
sion down the long vistas of time. It should ask 
the far future very earnest questions. It should 
ask: — Will I be needed then! Will I, who 
seem to state the truth to-day, fetter the truth 
seeker of to-morrow? Am I too exclusive? In 
the fresh exultation of youth, am I too arrogant 
of what was reverenced as the venerated faith 
of the years long gone, the truth which car- 
ried many burdens, and which, though now 
worn with age, was the guide and help of saints 
departed? These questions the truth seeker, the 
truth formulator, should ask himself. With 
this atmosphere of reverence, humility, forbear- 
ance, and wide horizon, the syllogism would 



100 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

more largely aid the pilgrims of the night, 
and do better service to the Church of 
Christ. 

One wonders, one cannot be very sure, if 
much that has been done and said with the claim 
of infallible authority would be done and said 
to-day if it was not for the sanctions and conten- 
tions of the past. One wonders if the doctrine 
of Transubstantiation, or of Consubstantiation, 
or any doctrine which vainly undertook to tell 
in human words just how the Eternal Christ is 
present in the Eucharist, and just how He 
worked His will, and communicated His pres- 
ence, would be formulated and sanctioned to- 
day by a general council of the Church, if there 
were no previous pronouncement on the subject 
save the simple words of the Master Himself. 
Because, after all, men cannot know. They feel 
and know His presence in sacraments, and in 
the written and spoken words of truth, and in 
the lives of those in whom His Spirit is incar- 
nate, but the past has taught us that the mys- 
tery of God in His relation to the soul is too 



ATMOSPHERE OP THE SYLLOGISM 101 

great to be adequately, and, therefore, ulti- 
mately expressed in human definitions and 
dogmas. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE REFORMATION A DISTINCTLY 
CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 

THE term "the Catholic Church," as it oc- 
curs in this discussion, is used in the 
comprehensive sense which makes it co-exten- 
sive with the whole number of those baptised 
into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy- 
Ghost, and who hold the faith, revealed in the 
great Gospel of Redemption, as epitomised in 
the Apostles' Creed, as essential to salvation. It 
was for this comprehensive interpretation that 
the English reformers contended. They sought 
to abolish the superimposed intensive notes and 
attributes, namely, the superadded doctrines 
and practices which had so delimited the ex- 
tension of the Church that it could no longer 

102 



REFORMATION A CATHOLIC MOVEMENT 103 

hold within itself the enlightened mind, and 
spiritual faith, and liberated thought of many 
thousands. To the ages past, the English Fa- 
thers said: — Ye have made the catholic claim 
and the catholic inclusiveness of the Church of 
Christ void by your traditions and dogmas. In 
seeking through the process of intension, and 
with logical justification of reasoning, to enrich 
and empower the organisation, you have so de- 
limited its catholicity that we find ourselves 
bound to protest against the acts of man that 
have proven contrary to the spiritual compre- 
hensiveness of His Body, the Church. The re- 
formers, in so far as they were protesting 
against the errors, or the ill-advised work of 
man, were asserting and defending the catholic 
conception of the Church of Christ. If, there- 
fore, to-day any component part of the Church 
has the historic and logical claim to any right 
to use, as descriptive of its position, the term 
" catholic,' ' it is surely those who, in sympathy 
with the reformers, are still protestant against 
the erroneous practices, dogmas and traditions 



104 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of the Church of Eome. If these erroneous 
positions were still made binding in this Church, 
as they are in the Church of Rome, it would 
invalidate her catholic claim by making this 
Church so largely intensive and so narrowly 
extensive that many who profess and call them- 
selves Christians, and who give the witness of 
the indwelling presence of the Spirit, would be 
excluded from the pale of her inclusiveness, 
and be left with the assurance and witness of a 
vital faith and a spiritual incorporation with 
Christ, outside the comprehensiveness of what 
would then be a misnamed "Holy Catholic 
Church." 



CHAPTER XH 
CAN THE CHURCH BE DEFINED? 

THE purpose of this book is to state 
certain principles; to challenge serious 
thought, and to ask certain practical and perti- 
nent questions which need to be squarely and 
fearlessly faced. It is not our purpose to try 
to answer all the questions raised. The answers 
to many of them may yet be far removed. It 
is at least worth something to see that the an- 
swers now given and commonly current are 
either wholly or partly wrong, and, therefore, 
unsatisfactory and untenable. 

A definition of the Church that is adequate 
and satisfactory and generally approved has 
never been formulated. The truth of this as- 
sertion is self-evident. A definition is given 

105 



106 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

in the 19th Article of Religion. It is the only 
one in the Book of Common Prayer, and there 
is none in the Constitution of the Church, nor 
is there one in the Gospel of Christ, or in the 
literature of the New Testament. The Church 
is in many places described. It is spoken of as 
"the Body of Christ/ ' as being "one, catholic 
and apostolic. " It is called in the shorter creed, 
"the holy Catholic Church." It is spoken of 
in the New Testament under a variety of de- 
scriptive terms such as "the household of God," 
an army, a body, etc. 

None of these descriptions and designations 
constitutes in any sense a definition. Indeed, 
each term in the description and designation 
has been subject to varied definitions. Into 
these definitions are invariably inserted the 
theories of the definers, and as long as theories 
differ and are insisted upon, the possibility of 
an adequate and satisfactory definition of the 
Church seems far removed, if not quite impos- 
sible. Take, for instance, the definition in the 
19th Article of Religion. "The visible Church 



CAN THE CHURCH BE DEFINED ? 10? 

of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in 
which the pure Word of God is preached, and 
the sacraments be duly ministered according 
to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of 
necessity are requisite to the same." 

Left to each man's private interpretation, this 
definition would doubtless be generally accepted 
as sufficiently adequate and comprehensive. 
Under these conditions, if they could ever ob- 
tain, Romanist and Protestant could both accept 
it, as could the catholic churchman, be he Roman 
or Protestant catholic in his teachings and con- 
victions. 

But once begin to define the terms in this or 
any other definition of the Church, and insist 
upon the acceptance of the term definition, and 
the whole ecclesiastical controversy of the ages 
is opened again. How many sacraments must 
be duly ministered! When and by whom are 
they duly ministered? Did Christ's ordinance 
confine their administration to the ministry of 
the apostolic succession, as the expression is 
generally defined by many in this Church? How 



108 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

can this be proven without question of doubt? 
Does the restriction, if allowed, apply to both 
sacraments alike 1 If not, why not 1 If so, then 
why did the General Convention declare that all 
who were baptised into the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost were thereby incorporated 
into the Holy Catholic Church? What then are 
all those things "that of necessity are requi- 
site" 1 Some will answer : "A ministry in the 
line of the apostolic succession. " Others will 
ask : ' ' Why then did not the definition say so f ' ' 

To define the Church is evidently impossible. 
Yet current, as well as historic ecclesiastical 
controversies, practically all spring from a fail- 
ure to agree upon a definition, or from the in- 
sistence that a party definition shall be accepted 
by everybody, which, of course, is quite impos- 
sible. 

The perfect senselessness of raising and con- 
tinuing contentions which are based upon what 
should be by this time recognised as the abso- 
lute impossibility of a common definition, 
should be apparent to all men who think. 



CAN THE CHURCH BE DEFINED ? 109 

As a matter of fact, the Church visible to- 
day is in reality neither one, catholic, nor apos- 
tolic. Its oneness has been broken by schism. 
Its catholicity has been delimited by exclusive 
claims, and its apostolic nature has been viti- 
ated in large measure by the spirit of each age 
through which its course has run, and by the 
age in which it now exists. Were the Church 
not of divine origin, and did it not live by a 
divine life present within, it would long since 
have perished from the face of the earth; for 
it has ever been treated much as men treated 
the despised, rejected, crucified, and yet ever- 
living Lord. 

If we cannot agree even among ourselves 
upon any adequate definition of the Church ac- 
tual and visible, then why should we continue to 
speak and act as though a definition either suf- 
ficiently inclusive or sufficiently exclusive had 
been determined upon? 

Would it not, in the plain light of facts and 
conditions as they exist, be far better if we 
agreed not to attempt to define the Church un- 



110 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

til it had become in reality what it was planned 
and intended to be by the Christ Himself? Is 
it not just because the Church actual is not 
the Church ideal that we cannot define it? To 
define it as it is, would be to deny it as He 
purposed it to become. 

It is very difficult, if not quite impossible, 
accurately and adequately to define a vital or- 
ganism in the process of becoming that which 
it is destined to be. That the Church is des- 
tined to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic 
is a proposition concerning which we are 
all in thorough agreement. That it is any of 
these now, he invites denial who ventures to 
assert. 

Therefore, to delimit the Church, in its inclu- 
siveness, and exclude from its nurture and ad- 
monition those who do not conform to a stand- 
ard which does not exist would seem to be as 
unwise and untenable a procedure as it would 
be to say that we cannot now be found in Christ 
because we are not yet found to be perfect even 
as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CHURCH UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE 

TITLE 

WHILE the Church cannot be adequately 
denned, it can be described in terms 
sufficiently definite, and adequately comprehen- 
sive to furnish the mind with a concept and 
ideal inclusive of the faith and spiritual experi- 
ence of man in his relation to God the Father, 
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. 

The descriptive statement suggested by Christ 
when, breaking the bread, He gave it to His 
disciples saying, "This is my Body/' and that 
used by St. Paul, who frequently describes the 
Church as "the Body of Christ," present the 
Church as a living organism. This concept 
is practical, definite, vital, inclusive, progres- 

111 



112 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sive, and deeply spiritual. It is individual and 
corporate; concrete, and yet mystical in its 
conclusiveness. It offers what would seem to 
be the promise of a definition of the Church 
Catholic that would be adequate, inclusive and 
scriptural. This we will not, however, attempt 
to formulate. 



CHRIST THE HEAD 

This concept of the Church definitely recog- 
nises Christ as the Head of the Body. His 
mind, His heart, His will, through His indwel- 
ling and over-ruling Spirit, vitalise, direct, and 
empower the living organism. 

The Body, the Church, is built up primarily 
from within. "What Sir Oliver Lodge calls the 
divine background of phenomena, what the 
Bible calls the creative will of God, what the 
Prayer Book calls the prevenient and co-opera- 
tive power of the Eternal Spirit, builds the 
Body of Christ, His Church. It is the outward 
and visible result of God working in us, both to 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 113 

will and to do His good pleasure. It is the 
self-revelation, the self-expression of the ever- 
outflowing and incoming life of God, the Self- 
incarnation of the divine Spirit in humanity, 
which builds up what St. Paul calls the Body 
of Christ. 



THE IMMEDIATE APPROACH 

The Christ, through His Spirit, speaks di- 
rectly to the souls of men. Prior to the exist- 
ence of any ministerial order, or written revela- 
tion, or sacramental institution, the voice of 
God spoke to the souls of men; "Be still and 
know that I am God." The silence has ever 
been a vital medium through which the Divine 
has entered into the inner shrine of human life. 
There the soul has ever heard the whispering 
voice of the nearby God. There at the unseen 
altar, human sacrifice of the costliest kind has 
ever been offered, as man has made response 
to the inner voice which said ; i ' My son, give me 
thine heart." There has been no record in- 



114 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

scribed to tell of the deep devotion and reverent 
offering of humanity in silent consecration be- 
fore these unseen altars of the soul. Like Nico- 
demus, thousands come to Him by night. We 
cannot count them yet. We cannot discount 
them. We may hope and believe that in the 
shadowless land of closer communion and 
deeper understanding, they will be made mani- 
fest in Him who has manifested Himself to 
them. 

The Christ needs their outward confession 
of faith, and it would seem that He had these 
mystical souls in mind when He constituted 
His Church. The sacraments of incorporation 
and of sustenance and unity, ordained by Him, 
were very elemental, very simple, and very 
mystical. In her after growth the visible 
Church may not have been as mindful as she 
might of the sensitive, delicate outreaching of 
these souls of the inner shrine. She may have 
unwittingly scared them back into their secret 
reserve as they looked out and listened for a 
way to build themselves into His visible Body. 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 115 

Her array of confessions, ringing with the clash 
of minds; her ordinances made coldly formal, 
or too glowingly and fervently ritualistic; her 
channels of grace, which are His Channels of 
grace, proclaimed with a logical claim of exclu- 
siveness which seemed to contradict their own 
souls' experience of an immediate relationship 
with God, have tended to make them doubtful 
and timorous, and so they have continued to 
worship at the inner shrine. Yet, every shrine 
where God meets and illumines a soul of man 
sends forth some light which, gleaming through 
the windows of human character, reveals the 
presence of Him who light eth every man that 
cometh into the world. 

THE MEDIATE APPEOACH 

Christ the Head of the Church ordained cer- 
tain means through which the life which was 
in Him might be infused into His Body, the 
Church ; and by which the Body might be built 
up into unity with Him and within itself, and 



116 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

be enabled thus to reveal and express the ful- 
ness of the divine life. 



THE MINISTRY AND THE SACRAMENTS 

One of the mediate means of the divine com- 
munication is the ministry of the Church. ' * The 
Christ,' ' writes St. Paul (Ephesians iv), "hath 
given some, apostles ; some, prophets ; and some, 
evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 
unto the perfecting of the saints for the doing 
of service, for the building up of the body of 
Christ; till we all come unto the unity of the 
faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a complete man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ." 

The unity of which the apostle here speaks 
is primarily and distinctly spiritual. He, how- 
ever, foresees that this unity may be destroyed 
by the independent working of the natural 
mind, and, therefore, urges the close union of 
the Body with Christ, its living and governing 
Head, through faith and spiritual knowledge 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 117 

"that we be not tossed like a wave, and carried 
about by every wind of teaching by the artifice 
of men in cunning craftiness, according to 
wily error." (Marginal reading, "Methodical 
Fraud.") 

The chief function of the ministry is the 
building up of the Body in love. The unity of 
the Church is a result to be obtained through 
the inner working of the spirit of Christ in and 
through His Body. Prior to all thought of 
unity of form, St. Paul urges the necessity for 
"endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit 
in the bond of peace" by living in obedience to 
the calling of Christ Jesus "with all lowliness 
and meekness, with long suffering, bearing with 
one another in love. ' ' 

There is ample evidence open to the student 
of Church history to show that before the 
Church had gone many centuries on its pilgrim- 
age, it came under the influence of forces which 
had their rise not in the mind of Christ, the 
Head of the Body, but in the mind which had 
been impressed by the force of external author- 



118 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ity, and dominated by the conception of the 
strength and grandenr of formal unity, resting 
npon the authority of external decrees, and 
made binding by the power of inflicting penal- 
ties for the suppression of the spirit of schism. 
The unity of the Roman empire moulded the 
conception of the unity of the Church. The 
Church and the state together came to see the 
mutual advantages which would follow from a 
material and spiritual alliance. We find em- 
perors calling general councils at a time when 
this one voice reached further than could the 
voice of any one bishop in its power to com- 
mand. Later we find that the balance of power 
has shifted, and the highly organised Church 
calls emperors and bids them lay their crowns 
at the feet of him who has grown, by assent, to 
be chief bishop, to receive their crowns again 
at his hand, to be worn during the pope 's good 
pleasure. 

Thus there grew in the Church a monarchical, 
an autocratic conception of orders and of 
Church government. The bishop became a prel- 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 119 

ate; the pope, the lord of lords and king of 
kings. 

The historic succession of orders, essential 
under any system to maintain the continuity of 
the outward and visible Church, and to pre- 
serve its outward unity, and to give integrity 
and force to its witness to the truth, became, un- 
der this monarchical system, autocratic and un- 
relenting in its claims and in its imperious de- 
mands. The idea of the apostolic succession 
was insisted upon as constituting the divine 
right of bishops to rule, not only over the peo- 
ple, but over kings and emperors also. It was 
the chief defence of the doctrine of the two 
swords. It brooked no opposition. A further 
study of Church history gives evidence that 
those who most vigorously asserted this claim 
to the exclusive succession were more mindful 
of preserving and establishing the claim to au- 
thority than of perpetuating the succession of 
apostolic graces and virtues, and the continued 
flow of spiritual life and power through the 
unbroken channel. Indeed, instances are in 



120 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

evidence, all down the course of Church his- 
tory, where the appearance of grace and vir- 
tue and spiritual liberty in those who ven- 
tured to question the decrees and interpreta- 
tions of those who ruled with the claim of a di- 
vinely given right, through the unbroken suc- 
cession, were pronounced heretic, and cut off 
from union with the Church, whose formal unity 
they threatened to disrupt by the assertion of 
any spiritual truth which was contrary to the 
autocratic decree sanctioned by the claim of the 
unbroken right, through succession, to exclusive 
authority. The power to enforce the claim lay 
not in the power to prove that truth, as well as 
the right to proclaim truth, had been divinely 
guaranteed through the succession, but in the 
power of the Inquisition, in the force of the 
sword, in the power of keys with which heaven 
and hell could be unlocked, and open the way to 
the eternal enforcement of the results of obe- 
dience to the authority perpetuated through the 
succession. 

Since the Inquisition has vanished, and the 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 121 

power of the sword has been removed, since the 
fires of persecution have been quenched, and 
the power of the pope over purgatory has lost 
its terror, it has been found that the claim to 
the right of an exclusive authority to bind men 
to Christ, or to the devil, by reason of the 
right of succession, is no longer held by all men, 
at all times and everywhere. Indeed, it is 
very questionable if it ever was held to this 
extent. 

It would be well for those branches of the 
Church Catholic who still maintain, not alone 
the fact of the historic succession, but also, the 
exclusive claims of the apostolic succession, as it 
relates to authority, to pause and ask just how 
much of this claim rests upon scriptural and 
spiritual grounds, and how much is an historic 
survival of claims made and maintained in the 
struggle of the Church to secure material power 
and temporal sway over every other form of au- 
thority whatsoever. 

It were well to do this for more reasons than 
one. The divine right to exclusiveness of power 



122 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and authority is being seriously questioned all 
over the world at the present time. Men are 
asking that those who make the claim show 
their credentials. A tree, they say, is known by 
its fruits. What are the fruits of this system! 
The autocratic, the aristocratic system is be- 
ing challenged as never before. Democracy is 
asking autocracy to give proof of its exclusive 
right to make absolute decrees which restrain 
the liberties of the people. The question as it af- 
fects the future of empires is closely akin to the 
question as it affects the Church. It is authority 
versus liberty. The ancient system, bulwarked 
by ancient claims, and supported by ancient the- 
ories and interpretations, such as hereditary de- 
scent, and the divine right, is to-day face to face 
with a new theory of government, a new inter- 
pretation, and a somewhat more comprehensive 
idea of divine rights. Among them is the right 
which men are asserting to be free. The power 
of the monarch, of the autocracy, is the force 
which it commands. The people pay the bills and 
canvass the results. They may admit the divine 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 123 

right as long as it does not lay upon them bur- 
dens too grievous to be borne. They pay the 
bills as long as they do not feel the weight of 
oppression. They remain subservient as long 
as they feel that their liberties are not threat- 
ened. When, however, the system grows too 
iron clad, and rights become exclusive, and the 
guns which the system commands with supreme 
authority are in danger of being used to make 
the people more subservient, then new concep- 
tions of the divine rights spring into being. 
The man and the gun come into conflict. In 
the state it is called revolution. In the Church 
it is called reformation or reconstruction. The 
question as to which will triumph in the end is 
not hard to answer. The only question that 
is hard to answer is, when will the end come? 
The gun is dead. The man lives. The man 
may live to make other guns, but if used against 
the divine rights of the people, they, too, will be 
overthrown in due time. 

And yet, it is evident that the two concepts 
are not necessarily contradictory. Authority 



124 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and liberty are not only not exclusive and antag- 
onistic terms — they are mutually dependent the 
one upon the other. Like the conservative and 
radical elements in government, and in society, 
they are both essential to the security of the 
state, and of the Church. Authority which over- 
rides personal liberty results in despotism. Lib- 
erty, undirected and unrestrained by authority, 
results in license and lawlessness. The individual 
and the state, the churchman and the Church, 
owe mutual obligations the one to the other. 
Their interests are ultimately identical. The 
problem in state and Church is to find and es- 
tablish the right balance of power, namely, to 
secure authority without arrogance, and lib- 
erty without license. The objection against 
autocratic prelacy cannot be rightly charged 
against a system of Church government by 
bishops; nor are the objections against individ- 
ualism a valid argument for an autocratic epis- 
copate. The exclusive claims of the priesthood, 
entrenched behind the logical and ecclesiastical 
claims of an apostolic succession of authority, 



UNDER A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE 125 

are not the only alternative to lawlessness and 
absolute individualism in the Church. There is 
the central ground position which will be stated 
and considered later on. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE MESSAGE OF THE TRANSITION 

THE past and the future are both calling' to 
the present. The call comes as a chal- 
lenge. Old things are passing away. But they 
are passing before the present. And as they 
pass they are asking: — Am I worth while? 
It is a motley throng which we are called to re- 
view. The ancient priest approaches, vested 
with the insignia of authority. He holds the 
jewelled chalice in one hand and the scroll bear- 
ing the record of his unbroken priestly ances- 
try in the other. He pauses to tell us of time- 
worn cathedrals where he has served, of an- 
cient chants gloriously sung, of processions 
gorgeously robed passing with solemn tread 
through long-drawn aisles, and pausing before 

126 



THE MESSAGE OF THE TRANSITION 127 

the altar high and lifted up, crowned with the 
cross, and aglow with candles. Do we need him? 
Shall we strip him of his jewelled stole and 
sacerdotal garb! Shall we take from him his 
golden chalice, and the roll of his priestly de- 
scent? Shall we hush the ancient music which 
echoes in his soul! Shall we turn the proces- 
sion, in which he is wont to walk, and make it 
stop at the pulpit, or at least at the lectern, but 
forbid it passing in ritualistic reverence to the 
altar? Shall we hurt him by cribbing his cross, 
or leave him there in the darkness without any 
candles ? 

The prophet passes ! His garb is simple. He 
walks as one conscious of mission. He holds 
in his hand the Book which the priest had in 
his pocket. He has a far wistful look in his 
piercing eyes. He stops to tell us of his task, 
of his heart's desire, and of his hope. He is a 
man of visions unfulfilled. He speaks as one 
filled with a spirit of a noble discontent. He is 
impatient of restraint. He tells of temples 
closed to him, and of limitations imposed upon 



128 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the message of righteousness which burns with- 
in his soul by reason of the decrees set up to 
defend the imperilled truth of centuries long 
gone. He is a man of prayer. He bears in his 
body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Do we need 
him? Shall we set him free? 

Next comes the monk. He is garbed in black 
and girded about the waist. A gleaming cross 
is pendant on his breast. In his hand is his 
ancient book of devotion. He pauses to tell us 
of the vision seen in his cell. It came to him 
while he knelt in prayer after having fasted 
long. The glow of the vision is upon his face, 
made thin by long abstinence. He has come 
forth because he has heard the cry of the world's 
great need, and he has come to serve. Do we 
need him? Shall we demand that he divest him- 
self of that with which his order has vested 
him? Shall we forbid him the solitude of his 
cell? Shall we obliterate his personality, and 
send him forth to try to minister as some one 
other than the man he is? 

Then there passes the non-conformist minis- 



THE MESSAGE OF THE TRANSITION 129 

ter. He is an aged man. He reminds us of the 
parson of Goldsmith's " Deserted Village.' ' We 
ask his name. We turn to our Church Year 
Book, but it is not there. His credentials bear 
no mitred symbol of authority. We look at 
him askance, for, as the Jews had no dealings 
with the Samaritans, we may confer by the way- 
side upon terms of courtesy with him, but dare 
we co-operate? Is he of the Church? Some 
one whispers: "No, his orders are not valid." 
Another cries out : l i He is a sectarian ! ' ' The 
pilgrim wonders why he is the cause of all this 
tumult and contention. He has not asked to 
be admitted into the Church any further than 
he considers himself admitted already. Seeing 
that he is about to be unchurched, he bows and 
passes on. 

He is followed by several men in the garb of 
rustics. They are kind and simple folk who 
have come, following the parson on his pilgrim- 
age. As they speak of him, there is a ring of 
conviction in their voices, and a tone of deep 
sincerity, and of honest pride. "What," they 



130 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ask, "is this we heard as we stood near, of our 
pastor not having the apostolic succession, and 
not being able to administer to us the Supper 
of the Lord? He is the apostle of the Lord 
through all the mountains and valleys where we 
live, and is loved by all for his exceeding good- 
ness. He knows the Scriptures, and from them 
preaches Christ, and many has he led to receive 
Him as their Saviour. He has baptised well- 
nigh all the folk in the mountains. Through all 
kinds of weather, he goes about visiting the 
poor, and pointing the way to brighter worlds to 
those who are sick unto death. And, stranger, 
when the old man kneels down in homes where 
sorrow has come, and prays, you feel the very 
presence of God, and heaven comes down, and 
we seem to see the open door through which 
our loved ones have passed on into the light. 
Many a boy in the mountains, that was bringing 
naught but sorrow home, has he gone after 
and brought to Christ. Men who once spent 
their time fighting and drinking moonshine, 
and turning their homes into hell, have been 



THE MESSAGE OF THE TRANSITION 131 

converted under his preaching, and changed 
their ways, so that now you would hardly know 
the country if you had known it as it was be- 
fore he came. To see these men kneeling on 
Sunday taking the sacred sacrament would set 
your heart aglow with gladness, and many a 
woman turns away from the table of the Lord, 
and walks down the aisle with her man by her 
side, with tears of joy streaming down her face. 
Stranger, it is like the parable of the prodigal 
son just being acted out up there in the moun- 
tains with our pastor going out all the time 
bringing the wanderers home. You say your 
church does not call him a minister in good and 
regular standing? "Where lies the fault with 
him! He serves the Master as His minister, 
and is honoured by Him. He has the tokens of 
his Master's acceptance of his work. He has re- 
ceived the Spirit, and speaks and lives with His 
power. "Why do you call him your opponent, a 
heretic and schismatic? It didn't seem to mat- 
ter much with him, but it hurts us, because all 
these years he has been our friend, our guide 



132 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and comforter, and the only minister in the 
mountains. ' ' 

The time and the audience seem not propi- 
tious for a defence of the historic grounds upon 
which rest the exclusive claims of the Church. 
The men follow their pastor, and will probably 
continue to follow him through the gates of 
Paradise. 

They leave us thinking, and again we ask : — 
"Do we need him? Who are we, anyway ?" 
" Guardians,' ' it is said, "and custodians of a 
sacred trust,' '. And what is this trust! "The 
Church," we reply. "Whose Church?" it is 
asked, and we answer, i i The Church of Christ, 
the divinely constituted repository of sacred or- 
ders and of sacred sacraments and of the Holy 
Bible and the ancient creeds." Well, whose 
fault is it then that the man dismissed with 
courteous firmness, or with the brand of schis- 
matic and heretic, is on the outside, and not of 
"the Church"? Is it the result of an inade- 
quate definition? Are we sure that we have 
defined "the Church" in terms sufficiently com- 



THE MESSAGE OF THE TRANSITION 133 

prehensive when we have, by our definition, 
excluded him? Are we sure that the definition 
which excludes us from co-operation with the 
minister of irregular orders is of divine sanc- 
tion? Or is it upon historic grounds that we 
leave him without the pale of the strictly bound- 
ed One, Catholic and Apostolic Church? We 
should be very sure. The procession is fast 
passing on. We must choose those who may be 
counted worthy to be numbered with us in what 
we call "the Catholic Church." Later we will 
return to the priest, the prophet, the monk and 
the minister. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE TERMS "CATHOLIC" AND "CATHO- 
LIC SANCTION" 

MUCH confusion of thought results from 
the use of the term "catholic" in didac- 
tic discourses and controversial writings, by 
reason of the fact that the term is not defined 
by those who use it. This results in misun- 
derstanding, and in confusion of thought. 
There seems to be no generally accepted stand- 
ard as to what constitutes the authority by 
which catholic sanction may be said to exist for 
teachings and practices which are current 
among us, and which are defended by their 
adherents on the ground that they are teach- 
ings and practices of unquestioned catholic 
sanction and authority. 

134 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 135 

We are mindful of the answer made by a 
teacher to a dull scholar that he could give 
to the scholar a reason for a thing, but that he 
could not give him an understanding. We are 
also mindful that it was for an understanding 
heart and mind that Solomon prayed. 

It would be for the good of the Church if 
some understanding could be reached as to the 
meaning and significance of the terms used 
among us. It would minister to clearness of 
thought, and would tend to remove a good deal 
of mutual misunderstanding which now results 
from the use of undefined terms. 

The laymen of the Church must, at times, be 
very much confused, and find it very hard to 
know just what to think and just what to be- 
lieve. It is not to be wondered at when the 
priests of the Church use language which fails 
entirely to convey to one clergyman of the 
Church the concept that is in the mind of an- 
other. It is surely a waste of time and energy 
and thought to engage in endless controver- 
sies, and then come to find that we were talk- 



136 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ing about entirely different things, or about 
two separate and distinct aspects of the same 
thing. Perhaps there is no word current among 
us which gives rise to more misunderstanding 
and confusion of thought than this word ' ' Cath- 
olic." 

Certain practices and teachings are set forth 
and defended by individuals and parties in the 
Church as being of catholic sanction. When 
asked by what sanction they have been made 
catholic, answers become confused, or many 
become confused to whom the answers are 
given. We are told that they are sanctioned by 
the Catholic Councils, but there is no one to tell 
us with final authority which are ' ' the Catholic 
Councils. ' ' The Orthodox Eastern Church, the 
Roman Church, and the Anglican Communion 
are not in agreement upon this point. We 
look among the decrees of the Councils, extend- 
ing from 325 to the seventh council held in 787, 
and fail to find the catholic sanction claimed for 
certain theories, interpretations and practices. 
Then we are told the name of the council giving 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 137 

sanction to the doctrine or teaching, and find it 
was a national or provincial council, or else the 
authority of one of the several Eoman Catholic 
Councils, which claim to be general. It natu- 
rally becomes somewhat hard to determine what 
kinds of councils were capable of giving catholic 
sanction to doctrines and practices. 

Or, if perchance we are cited to the ancient 
Fathers and turn to them, we either find the 
point in question not mentioned among them, or 
else find conflicting testimonies. And when 
asked which are the catholic fathers, there 
seems to be, at times, a disposition to answer 
that the catholic fathers are the fathers who 
held the truth which we hold. 

When the National Councils of the English 
Church met in order that the English Church 
Fathers might express their desire to make the 
Church more truly catholic as they interpreted 
catholicity, by repudiating the superadded 
notes, dogmas and teachings which they held 
to have been imposed upon the Church without 
catholic sanction, according to the old rule of 



138 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

what constituted catholic sanction, they cast 
aside and repudiated many of these superadded 
intensive notes so as to make the Church more 
truly extensive, and thus, in their judgment, 
more truly catholic. 

Against these superadded practices and 
teachings, the English Church protested on the 
ground that they had, without sufficient author- 
ity, been fostered upon the faith once delivered 
to the saints. "The Church,' ' they said, "as 
the witness and keeper of Holy Writ, ought not 
to decree anything against the same, so, besides 
the same, ought it not to enforce anything to 
be believed for necessity of salvation. ,, 

Many teachings and practices current among 
us would seem not to have what the national 
Church Councils of England regarded as cath- 
olic sanction, and they lack the consent and 
authorisation of the National Branch of the 
Church in America where they are introduced 
and advocated. 

It is not questioned at this point as to whether 
or not these things, claimed to be of catholic au- 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 139 

thority, are edifying to the Church. The teach- 
ings and practices in question may be defensible 
on this ground, and on this ground they might 
be defended by those who so believe. It might, 
perhaps, be shown that they minister to rever- 
ence, and that they enhance the spirit of devo- 
tion, and that they should, therefore, receive 
the sanction of the National Council of this 
Church in America. This would be a perfectly 
justifiable method of procedure, and if it was 
not insisted that these doctrines and practices 
should be made binding upon the faith and prac- 
tice of the whole Church, the advocates seek- 
ing permission to hold and follow them might 
win many adherents. But, when a vague claim 
is made that they are of catholic authority, 
and of unquestionable catholic sanction, and 
when it is advocated with the expressed or im- 
plied insinuation or implication that those who 
do not believe and conform to them are untrue 
to the catholic heritage of the Church, then, 
those against whom such aspersions are made 
surely have the right to ask that the terms 



140 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

i l catholic, ' ' and ' ' catholic sanction, ' ' and ' ' cath- 
olic authority,' ' be more clearly and adequately 
defined. 

The student of psychology can quite well un- 
derstand, and fully appreciate, how and why 
many of these teachings and ceremonial rites 
should commend themselves to certain types of 
mind, and find a devotional response in certain 
types of human nature. From this point of 
view, it can be quite well understood why the 
advocates of these views and practices should 
firmly believe that they are advocating what 
they believe to be principles which are catholic 
in their nature and intent. This, however, is 
another question from the claim of a catholic 
sanction by any expressed catholic authority. 

In view, therefore, of the confusion resulting 
from the constant use of undefined terminology, 
would it not be conducive to clearness of 
thought and to a better understanding, if those 
who used the terms ' i catholic, ' ' ' ' catholic sanc- 
tion/ ' " catholic authority,' ' and "Catholic 
Church" took the pains, and did others the 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 141 

service, to define the terms in order that lan- 
guage might be the means of communicating 
intelligible ideas and definite concepts, and not 
produce confusion of thought, out of which 
constantly arise endless and useless contro- 
versies? 

To illustrate the point in question as to the 
accepted meaning of the term "the Catholic 
Church, ' ' it would be well to define and explain 
just what is meant. 

Is the term used to describe the Body of 
Christ, inclusive of all those who have been bap- 
tised into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost? There are those who thus use the word 
to describe the organisation as to its mem- 
bership. 

As to the Faith: It may, however, be said 
that this membership must of necessity accept 
Holy Writ as being the inspired revelation of 
the word of God, as a prerequisite to the right 
of membership. This contention would be ad- 
mitted without controversy. 

It may be further said that this membership 






142 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

must also accept the faith expressed in the 
Apostles' Creed. As this faith is summed up in 
the baptismal service, and in the catechism of 
this Church, it is accepted now by practically 
the whole membership of those who profess and 
call themselves Christians. 

The Sacraments: It may be further insisted 
that this membership must of necessity be con- 
stituted through incorporation in the Body of 
Christ through baptism. This is universally 
accepted by all who are of the Christian Church. 

Beyond this point, what shall be said and 
held, and what is held by those who use the 
term! The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is 
surely a catholic institution. It is almost uni- 
versally held among Christians. By some its 
validity is made to depend absolutely upon the 
regularity of the ministry celebrating in the 
service. Vast numbers in the Holy Catholic 
Church have this sacrament from the hands of 
such a ministry. These, upon any theory, are 
considered within the membership of the Body 
described as "Holy Catholic." But what of 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 143 

others? They consider that they hold and re- 
ceive this sacrament. There are those who hold 
that their irregular ministry invalidates this 
claim. Is it held by those who use the term 
"The Catholic Church," in an exclusive sense, 
that those who have been incorporated into its 
membership, by Holy Baptism, are excluded 
from its membership, that is, are made schis- 
matic from the Body of Christ, by reason of 
this irregularity? Or, upon this theory, are 
they still of the membership of the Catholic 
Church, but irregular in practice and in con- 
formity? 

Is the threefold ministry, unbroken in con- 
tinuity, essential to the existence of the Holy 
Catholic Church? Or, is the threefold minis- 
try as an historic inheritance of the Catholic 
Church, essential, as Hooker claims, to its 
"well being,' ' but not, of necessity, essential to 
the extension of its membership, nor of neces- 
sity, therefore, essential to the existence in the 
Holy Catholic Church, of communions composed 
of a part of the catholic membership, holding 



144 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

imperfectly and incompletely the catholic herit- 
age? 

If this be true, would it not be better to dis- 
tinguish between the terms "the Catholic 
Church,' ' and "the Catholic heritage V 

It is evident that we are dealing here with 
- just the same kinds of distinctions and of quali- 
fying and descriptive terms as are of neces- 
sity used in denning and describing the nature 
and place of the sons of God in His Kingdom. 
There are those who are His children by na- 
ture, others by adoption, and those who are still 
His sons though they have wandered into far 
countries. It is exceedingly hard to define a 
vital and eternal relationship, and harder still 
to make our human terminology adequately de- 
scriptive, and sufficiently definite and inclusive, 
of an institution which is the living Body of the 
Living Christ. 

Then, too, it would be well to make it very 
clear as to what is meant by the term "cath- 
olic sanction, ' ' and the term ' ' catholic practice, ' ' 
if the terms are to be used freely among us. 



''CATlfdLKT' AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" US 

Are the terms so used intended to be descrip- 
tive of intensive notes of the catholic heritage, 
or the notes which test and delimit the catholic 
extension of the Church! Are they terms of 
enrichment, or qualities essential to the exist- 
ence of what is called the "catholic Church"? 

This is just the question that arose between 
St. Paul, St. Peter and the other apostles rela- 
tive to the Christian Church in apostolic times. 
It was asked that it be determined what prac- 
tices and customs and observances should be 
held as essential. Observances had been in- 
sisted upon by some which St. Paul held would 
delimit the comprehensiveness of the Church, 
if made a test of loyalty, or essential to mem- 
bership in the catholic Church. The question 
was taken before an apostolic council, and the 
decree given was that "it seemed good to the 
Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no 
greater burden than these necessary things.' ' 
(Acts xv, Gal. ii.) 

It would seem reasonable to hope and to ask 
that the term " catholic/ ' as descriptive of, 



146 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and as limiting the comprehensiveness of, the 
Church should be used, with the spirit of apos- 
tolic sanction, in this wide and comprehensive 
sense. It would also seem that it would con- 
duce to a larger readiness to accept the term if 
it could be used in defence of the claim to ob- 
serve the "necessary things.' ' If these neces- 
sary things are held to be the things declared 
essential to salvation in the Gospel of redemp- 
tion, then the term becomes sufficiently inclu- 
sive to conform to the sense in which it is doubt- 
less used in the creeds of the Church. 

Beyond this, the terms "catholic sanction," 
' ' catholic practice, ' ' etc., might well be confined 
to descriptions, definitions, interpretations, and 
practices pertaining to the ancient heritage of 
the Church Catholic. In any event, the sense 
and scope of the terms, when used, should be, 
for the sake of clearness, explained and defined. 

When the term i l catholic sanction, ' ' or " cath- 
olic authority," is used, it would minister to a 
better understanding if what constituted the 
sanction or authority were definitely stated. Is 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 147 

the sanction or authority claimed that of an 
(Ecumenical Council or papal decree? Or does 
it mean the sanction of the undivided Roman 
and Eastern Church. Or, does it mean the 
sanction of some council, or the general prac- 
tice of the Western Church, under Roman dom- 
ination, prior to the Reformation? Or, again, 
is it meant that the teaching or practice 
is inherently catholic in its nature, and so 
fully in harmony with the teaching of Scrip- 
ture, and the revealed will of Christ, that 
it deserves to be received and held as an inte- 
gral and indispensable part of the catholic faith 
and practice? Oh, is it meant that the doc- 
trine and practice was sanctioned by authority, 
or by use in the Roman Catholic Church prior 
to the English Reformation, and continued to 
be held and taught by many individuals in the 
English Church subsequent to the Reformation, 
but which, since the Reformation, has had the 
ecclesiastical authority and sanction of the 
Roman Church alone, or perhaps of the Greek 
and Old Catholic Church also? Then, too, it 



148 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

would be interesting and helpful to know 
whether the term "catholic sanction' • applies 
to theories of interpretation as well as to the 
facts of the faith and the historic continuity of 
certain rites and practices in the Church. 

If it be said that it would be difficult to clearly 
define in just what sense the terms are, in each 
instance, used, it may be said, also, that it is 
still more difficult to understand just what the 
claim for the authority and sanction is worth 
unless we are told very definitely just what the 
person making the claim has in mind as the 
basis on which it is founded. 

When it happens that, as a result of holding 
claims of "catholic authority," and "catholic 
sanction,' ' the rights and liberties of others in 
the Church are delimited ; and when it is sought, 
as a result of these exclusive views, to restrain 
others in this Church from acting within the 
bounds of what they feel is the liberty of their 
inheritance as sons of God, and as loyal mem- 
bers of this Church, then the reason becomes 
still more cogent and imperative for insist- 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 149 

ing that the claims of catholic authority 
and sanction be more clearly stated and 
defined. 

If the right and duty of the Church in this 
hour of supreme crisis to hold conference with 
Protestant Communions and to co-operate with 
them is denied upon the basis of interpretations 
of the ordinal, and theories of the succession, 
claimed to be of catholic authority, it is but 
fair to ask the source of this authority, and 
proof for the idea, which seems to be assumed, 
that this claim has ever been officially admitted 
by either the independent Anglican Church, or 
by this Church in America. 

If, when opportunities for conference and 
co-operative relationship with our Protestant 
friends (or opponents, as they are sometimes 
called by the exclusive school), present them- 
selves, this Church by legislative decree refuses 
to permit those who favour such action to en- 
gage in it with her official sanction, then this 
Church will indirectly, through her legislative 
action, give sanction to these theories and 



150 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

claims as being binding upon the whole Episco- 
pal Church. 

"We have arrived at the point where this vital 
and far-reaching question has been forced to the 
issue. The issue is forced by those who assert 
that their theories and interpretations are of 
catholic authority, and who deny the right of 
the Board of Missions and of the Church to 
participate in conferences and co-operative en- 
deavours with communions whose orders are 
not of the apostolic succession. It is a ques- 
tion which arises out of the world crisis which 
we face, and out of the world challenge to a 
materially bound and ecclesiastically dominated 
and divided Christianity. 

Those in the Church who are not disposed to 
question the catholic claim to exclusive inter- 
pretation so long as it is confined to the purpose 
of satisfying those who make it as to the nature 
and kind of their own priesthood, and their 
own position of exclusiveness ; do claim that 
they are not unreasonable in asking that the 
terms which restrict the liberty of others be 



" CATHOLIC " AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION'' 151 

clearly defined. Nor are they unreasonable nor 
contentious in insisting that the ground and 
authority for interpretations and opinions 
claimed as of catholic sanction be definitely 
stated, before the whole Church, through legis- 
lative enactment, or pronouncement, is asked to 
give sanction to these exclusive claims by deny- 
ing those who hold a different view the liberty 
to express their convictions in conference and 
co-operative relationship. 

By such restrictions, the General Convention 
would give practical sanction to views and con- 
tentions, to theories and opinions, which, when 
they have been considered on their merits, have 
never received the official sanction of either the 
Anglican or the American Church. This is not 
the way to change Church polity. 

That the English Church Fathers conferred 
and co-operated with ministers not of her or- 
der, is a fact written clearly in the pages of 
history, and that among the first bishops con- 
secrated in this Church in America, there were 
those who did so, is likewise known to all who 



152 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

know the early history of this branch of the 
Church of Christ. 

To depart from this historic position; to al- 
low any claims of catholic authority or inter- 
pretation to deprive churchmen of liberal or in- 
clusive conviction of the right, with the full au- 
thoritative sanction of this Church, to express 
their conviction individually and collectively 
would be to reduce the comprehensiveness of 
this Church down to the limits of a school of 
thought, and would brand her, in the face of 
the world crisis, as a separated sect, cut off by 
her insistence upon liberty and true catholicity 
from the Church of Borne, and by her exclusive 
claims from conference and oo-operation with 
Protestant Christianity. 

While it is not asked that any legislation 
should be enacted forbidding those who hold 
these exclusive views from retaining them, and 
acting in accordance with them, so far as con- 
ference and co-operative relationship with 
Protestant communions is concerned; it is 
asked, and insisted, that this Church shall not 



"CATHOLIC" AND "CATHOLIC SANCTION" 153 

consent to legislate, or give official pronounce- 
ment that shall restrain the inherent liberty 
and cherished conviction of others, whose loy- 
alty and devotion to the Church is unquestioned, 
in the light of her historic position, and in the 
presence of her authoritative standards as they 
honestly and unequivocally understand and 
interpret them. 

The point to be clearly borne in mind is, that 
to legislate, requiring all to confer and co-op- 
erate with those not of this communion, would 
be to give the authoritative interpretation and 
sanction of this Church to the liberal and in- 
clusive view of the Church, and would be unfair 
to those who hold other views; while, on the 
other hand, to refuse permission and deny the 
right of those who desired to enter into con- 
ference and co-operative relationship with prot- 
estant communions to do so with her sanction, 
would be to give official endorsement to the po- 
sition and views and contentions of the extreme, 
often called catholic, party in the Church. 

If this Church remains fully possessed of a 



154 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sound mind and a well-balanced judgment, she 
will persistently refuse to legislate to require 
or compel to co-operate or confer with other 
communions those who cannot consistently do 
so. She will also persistently refuse to with- 
hold her official consent from those who desire 
such conference and co-operative liberty. 






CHAPTER XVI 
THE APPEAL TO THE PAST 

IT can be conclusively shown that every dis- 
puted dogma, taught and held by the 
Church, and authorised as a note of catholicity, 
can be established by quotations from the an- 
cient fathers, or the ancient councils. From 
similar sources the contrary propositions can 
also be conclusively established. This state- 
ment is true, for instance, of the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, or of any interpretation of 
the real presence of Christ in the Holy Com- 
munion. It is true of the doctrine of priestly 
absolution, and of various interpretations of 
the apostolic succession, and of the growing 
claims of the papacy. The ancient fathers were 
far from being of one mind. Nothing is gained 

155 



156 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

in controversy by quoting from them upon a 
point in question, if it is intended by this method 
to establish the contention that a certain inter- 
pretation has been always, and by all men, held 
upon any subject where the effort has been made 
to explain how the Christ is present in anything 
human and material. The fact of His presence 
may be established historically as constant in 
the faith of the Church. The method of His 
presence, and the how of His communication of 
Himself evidently perplexed the minds of the 
fathers as it has the minds of the children of 
the third and fourth and all succeeding gen- 
erations. 

If propositions exactly contrary may be (as 
they surely can be) proven by quotations from 
the Fathers, then what conclusive service may 
they render to the Church perplexed with the 
problem of knowing what to authorise and 
decree as being binding upon the con- 
science, and essential in the practice of the 
Church! 

They may render valuable, service. Their 



THE APPEAL TO THE PAST 157 

voices would seem, all unconscious to the an- 
cient fathers themselves, to blend in an appeal 
for liberty of interpretation, for liberty of prac- 
tice, and for an inclusive Church. After the 
contenders for a certain interpretation or prac- 
tice have filled pages with certain sure quo- 
tations from the ancient writings in proof of 
their view, and have established it upon this 
ground beyond question, then let the contrary 
interpretation be stated, and call the fathers. 
The same ones may not come. (Sometimes they 
will.) But others with hair as white, and with 
forms as venerable, and with names as highly 
honoured, will appear out of the dim past and 
give testimony that will fill just as many pages 
proving the contrary theory or practice as the 
case may be. What then? Shall we slay the 
fathers of the contrary view as the Church 
slew the ancient prophets and the Christ? Or 
shall we learn from them the necessity of mak- 
ing the Church comprehensive of varied inter- 
pretations and practices, so long as Christ is 
honoured, worshipped, revealed and served as 



158 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the divine Saviour of men and the ever-living 
Head of His Body, the Church. 

Shall we not learn from them the futility of 
seizing the ray of light reflected from the men- 
tal angle of the party mind and formulating it 
into a dogma, and labelling it the sun? Shall 
we not learn that the light of eternal truth 
reflects itself from many angles 1 

If it should be answered that truth does not 
shine both dark and light; the reply is that 
while this is true, yet many truth-seekers, or 
truth-holders, are unfortunately colour blind. 
To God they may be both alike. We had better 
wait and see. In the darkness of the night He 
hath set many stars, and some of them are to 
us still invisible. Truth is vaster than the 
heavens, and extends beyond the stars. Let us, 
at least, leave loopholes in our battlements of 
thought. It were better to build watch towers 
and place in them far-seeing men to tell us of 
the night, what its signs of promise are. 



CHAPTEE XVII 
THE ANCIENT PATHS 

SURELY no man, no matter how progres- 
sive his mind may be in its tendencies, will 
despise the ancient paths. In them have walked 
the saints of all ages. The truth we have in- 
herited has come to us from those who walked 
in them. Along the way are the footprints of 
priests and prophets, and the blood-stains of 
martyrs. Along the way are the ancient cathe- 
drals where the spirit of praise and devotion has 
wrought itself into poems of rhythmic stone. 
Down these corridors come the harmonies of 
music chanted in glorious song. If we listen 
we may hear blended in these symphonies the 
voices of God's angels. Over these paths have 
passed the great confessors. The ancient 

159 



160 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

creeds have come this way. Along them have 
passed the truth-seekers of the ages, and as 
they passed they have set up stones which mark 
the progress of the clearer revelation of God 
to the heart and mind of humanity. The an- 
cient paths are the source of our heritage. 
They mark the continuity of truth and of hu- 
man experience through the ages. They reveal 
the links "that bind the generations each to 
each." The ancient paths are the paths of the 
ever-coming Christ. 

But He has not finished His advent. The 
Christmas message was not a history alone but 
a revelation of a way opened from heaven to 
all men, at all times, everywhere. Pentecost 
illumined not alone the beginning of the ancient 
path, but gave the revelation of His perpetual 
presence who should be with His Church unto 
the end of the world to " guide us into all 
truth." 

The ancient path will grow longer and more 
ancient as time goes on. In it we are not called 
to walk backward, though as we walk forward 



THE ANCIENT PATHS 161 

we should pause often to look backward, and 
learn from those who have climbed the steep 
ascent through peril, toil and woe. Though of 
the past, their spirits go before the pilgrims 
of to-day. We follow in their train. We rev- 
erently and humbly learn of them what they 
learned of Christ, and are enriched by the testi- 
mony of their experience and their realisation 
of the presence of God. 

It is for us of the present to determine how 
the path of an ancient life and truth, and yet 
of an ever-living Lord, "the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life," shall run through the present, 
and be directed to the future. The Church marks 
the way. Christ leads the way. Shall not all 
those who own Him as their Lord, and follow 
Him, be comprehended in our conception of it! 
Shall our theories and our demands be made 
so exclusive and narrow as to force into by- 
paths many whom He leads % Some of these by- 
paths are, as the years lengthen into centuries, 
becoming ancient paths also. And along them 
are to be found memorials which are cherished 



162 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

in the memories not alone of the children of 
those who passed this way to the open gates of 
Paradise, but of all who have souls sufficiently 
great to honour heroism and to appreciate the 
glow which hallowed the lives of these saints 
of God, departed by what some would still call 
sectarian by-pathways. Do we not need a new 
survey and a more comprehensive conception of 
the Church which we assert is the accredited 
way to heaven! Should not the Church be as 
comprehensive as is the Christ who is the ever- 
living way? 

It would doubtless come to pass that, as a 
result of the sympathy and understanding 
which would inevitably grow out of closer fel- 
lowship, the non-conformist Churches would 
come to a deeper appreciation of the value of 
giving to the faith they hold and the truth they 
teach the added authority which comes from 
the witness of its unbroken historic survival 
and continuity through the centuries back to 
the life and teaching of Christ and His holy 
apostles. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
INDIVIDUALISM 

TERMS which contain an idea expressive 
of power and vitality often come, in the 
use of them, to be terms of reproach and of 
obloquy. It is usually the "ism" at the end 
that has in it the sting. The "ism" is gener- 
ally the result of the distortion and perversion 
of the thought or possibility of power which 
the term originally expressed. The individual 
has ever been the chief concern of Christ. The 
parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, 
the discourses which He held with individual 
men and women, His methods of personal ap- 
proach, and the expressions in His teaching 
which tell of God's love and care for a human 
soul, show how priceless, in His estimation, was 

163 



164 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the life of the individual man. It is in the 
individual that we find the distinctive elements 
of personality which reveal the kinship of man 
with God. Yet distinctness and force of per- 
sonality, and a full measure of personal liberty, 
are not incompatible with unity. In the Blessed 
Trinity three Persons have ever existed in the 
unity of the Godhead. 

Individualism is personality run riot. In the 
life of the Church we sometimes hear it said 
that it is unwise and inexpedient for an indi- 
vidual or a party to advance ahead of the 
corporate body. To insist upon this restriction 
would result in suppressing the thought and 
energy of the scout who has ever been the 
pathfinder of truth. It is doubtless well to 
caution the pioneer of the danger of going too 
far ahead of the corporate body, but the liberty 
of scouting ahead in thought and action should 
be encouraged rather than censured by the 
Church. 

The individual, however, should be taught 
that the success and permanent worth of his 



INDIVIDUALISM 165 

endeavour as a seeker after truth and an ex- 
perimenter in the great laboratory of experi- 
ence, will be determined by his ability to con- 
tribute his ideas to the permanent inclusive- 
ness and solidarity of the corporate Body. The 
pioneer tries the ground ahead. He tests truth 
in new fields of action. It is true that he is 
exposed to peril. He is between two fires. He 
is a mark for the enemy of the truth, and is apt 
to draw upon himself the fires of its defenders. 
He is often the martyr of history. He is almost 
sure to be branded as a heretic, and sometimes 
has to wait until centuries after he is dead 
before the thought of the world reaches the 
point where he fell. Then it may happen that 
the Church will mark the triumph of her own 
intelligence by canonising the dead heretic as 
a saint. This has been the path along which 
many of the saints have achieved their place in 
the canon. The Church is slow to learn and 
often too quick to speak. She has to take many 
things back. This is hard to do. It is a con- 
fession of error and of mistake. The institu- 



166 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

tion that has made much of its infallibility is 
apt to be reluctant to acknowledge the mistakes 
of its past. If larger liberty had been given 
to individuals and parties to try out new ideas, 
to test the prophet's vision, and to make experi- 
ment with the enthusiasm of initiativej this 
Church might have kept within her fold many 
who have done vast good outside of it. 

In doing this the Church should not be con- 
sidered as endorsing the idea or experiment be- 
cause she allows it. Again, the principle of her 
thought, and the attitude of her mind, should 
be: "Let these men alone. If this counsel or 
this work be of men, it will come to naught; 
but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; 
lest haply ye be found even to fight against 
God" (Acts v, 38 and 39). 



CHAPTER XIX 
THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA 



L 



ETTERS to the Editor" are very illu- 
minating documents. Most of us have 
written them on some subject of controversy 
which was engaging the attention of the Church. 
Sometimes in sober thoughtfulness we have re- 
pented having done it. We have wondered if 
the attention of the Church might not perhaps 
have been better directed in more vital and 
helpful channels. Especially have we thought 
this after attending some great missionary 
meeting, or after having received clearer and 
more far-reaching vision through the appeal 
and inspiration of the Holy Communion. Then 
there has come to us the consolation that per- 
haps they had not absorbed the attention of 
the Church very much after all. 

167 



168 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

Nevertheless, "Letters to the Editor' 9 are, 
at times, very illuminating. Among other 
things they frequently illumine the bounds of 
mental vision and the scope of human sympa- 
thy. Sometimes they show these bounds to be 
very narrow. Sometimes they reveal ranges of 
truth beyond the bounds of partisan interpre- 
tation. These letters encourage us to read oth- 
ers in the hope of finding more like them. Per- 
haps that is why the "Letters to the Editor' ' 
are read to a degree to justify the space they 
occupy in our Church papers. 

"Letters to the Editor" have an accustomed 
way of seeking, without due ceremony or apol- 
ogy, to throw us unconditionally upon either 
one or the other of the two sharp-pointed horns 
of a dilemma. The truth, it is said, must be 
either this or that. In the last number of one 
of our Church papers we are informed that 
"the Church either does or does not believe 
that the priest has power to give absolution." 
The writer insists that the Church should say 
whether he has or has not. 



THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA 169 

We are informed that the Church either does 
or does not believe in the "real presence" of 
Christ in the Lord's Supper, and that the 
Church should say whether she does or does 
not. 

We are told that the doctrine of the apos- 
tolic succession is either true, or that it is not ; 
and that the Church should declare her inter- 
pretation. 

The necessity for all this is stated in the 
claim set forth that in the Church there should 
be but one voice, one view and an unbroken 
uniformity of teaching on each and every one of 
these points, and on every other question upon 
which, at present, divergent views prevail. 

The Church very wisely allows divergent 
views to prevail. If she sought to fasten any 
vital truth to either one or the other of the 
two horns of the dilemma, she would, in many 
instances, crucify again the truth itself. She 
would certainly drive from her fold many 
seekers after truth. 

If she insisted upon giving to any or all of 



170 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

these questions the answer of an unconditional 
"Yes," and demanded that her ministry should 
sign certain articles of interpretation, in which 
the high priestly sacerdotal view upon these 
questions was asserted as being the only view 
which might be held and taught, she would, for 
instance, exclude from her ministry the large 
majority of the graduates of the Virginia Semi- 
nary, and many of the graduates of Philadel- 
phia, Cambridge, and of other Church divinity 
schools. Had this been done, the service ren- 
dered at home and in foreign lands by these men 
would, of necessity, have had to be rendered 
outside of her fold. 

If, on the other hand, she gave in answer an 
unconditional "No," and required subscription 
to articles in which the high priestly and sacer- 
dotal claims were denied and repudiated, most 
of the graduates of the General, of Faribault, 
Nashotah, and many of the graduates of other 
seminaries would have been, and would now 
be, excluded from the ministry of this Church. 

Would writers of "Letters to the Editor'* 



THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA 171 

really wish to force men to either the one alter- 
native or the other with the necessary resulting 
consequences I 

Upon such horns may be hung men's hats, 
and men's scalps, but not the brains and hearts 
of vital, loving, conscientious Churchmen, who 
see the truth from different viewpoints, who 
teach it with varied emphasis, and who some- 
times see gleams of it in both the "Yes" and 
the "No" of the paradoxes stated in the "Let- 
ters to the Editor." 

Unless we are really determined to make the 
Church less catholic than she now is, we should 
resolutely refuse to delimit her comprehensive- 
ness by seeking to give the exclusive sanction 
of authority, or of official interpretation, to 
those notes of conviction voiced in the letters 
of exclusive and partisan contention. The 
writers of these letters would make the colour 
of loyalty so vivid, and so clearly denned, and 
so lurid that there could be no shadings of 
colour away from it or into it. In this event, 
the Church would become a doctrinal paintshop, 



172 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

or, at most, a formal gallery of ecclesiastical 
art of one school of painters. 

Truth has ever refused to be so portrayed. 
Vital and eternal, she gleams and glows and 
shines in and through the souls of men, and 
reflects her light from many angles of many 
minds. As the sun glows in myriad colours 
from the snow-capped Alps, made refulgent 
with sunset glory; shimmers in varied hues 
upon the forest leaves, and on the limpid lake, 
and colour-changing sea ; as its light is reflected 
in the tinted bloom of every flower, in the pale 
radiance of the moonlight, and in the golden 
gleam of the stars ; even so is the light of truth 
refulgent in and reflected from the thought and 
spiritual experience of man. As one star dif- 
fereth from another star in glory, even so differ 
the gleams of truth, which come from the minds 
of men. 

But surely truth is too vital, and too pre- 
cious, and too divine to be stereotyped and de- 
limited to the narrow bounds of an interpre- 
tative ' ' Yes ' ■ or ' i No, ' ' as is often insisted upon 



THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA 173 

in the " Letters to the Editor.' ' If the Church 
is to edit truth, let the Church, for the truth's 
sake, and for man's sake, edit it largely, and 
not copyright the edition for all time. If she 
is to set up sign posts along the way of truth 
to point men heavenward, let "the way" be in- 
dicated by the straight arm of a cross pointing 
to the path marked by the footprints of the 
Son of Man. But let there not be set in the 
way of truth the theories of men to be the 
authoritative guide-posts along the way that 
leadeth to truth and to life. "The way" is the 
way of life. It is a narrow way, but it is wider 
than many of the more narrow and exclusive 
interpretations of human thought. 



CHAPTER XX 
THE PARADOXES OF TRUTH 

BECAUSE of the fact that truth is eternal 
and cannot be fully comprehended in posi- 
tive or negative statements made by, or com- 
prehended by, the human mind, the great teach- 
ers of truth have often spoken in paradoxes. 
The negative and the affirmative of a proposi- 
tion have been stated with perfect fearless- 
ness of seeming contradiction, and with entire 
disregard of seeming inconsistency. This 
method of stating or of suggesting the scope 
of truth shows that the teacher recognises the 
inadequacy of human reason to comprehend its 
limits, and to define its bounds. This method 
was often used by the Great Teacher, who was 
Himself the eternal Truth. ' i No man, ' ' He said, 

174 



THE PARADOXES OF TRUTH 175 

"hath seen the Father :" "He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father.' ' "I can of my own 
self do nothing :" "All power is given unto 
me." "I go my way to Him that sent me:" 
"Lo I am with you always." "This is my 
Body" and "My flesh is meat indeed:" "The 
flesh profiteth nothing." "I seek not mine 
own glory:" "Father, glorify thou me with 
the glory which I had with Thee before the 
world was. " " Not my will but thine be done : ' ' 
"I and my Father are one." These are but a 
few illustrations of His frequent use of the 
paradoxical method of teaching. 

The natural mind, the material and there- 
fore skeptical and superficial thought, has ever 
seen in such paradoxical statements irreconcil- 
able contradictions. The soul that feels God, 
and knows Him in experience, knows that He 
cannot be fully known. The spirit-illumined 
mind realises that truth is found in paradoxes, 
but sees that in the impossibility of finding it 
fully expressed in either one paradox or the 
other, lies the proof that the finite mind cannot 



176 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

by either a negative or positive assertion con- 
tain and express what is infinite. 

From the vast conception and reverence for 
truth, seen in the Master's use of the paradox 
as a teaching method, the Church might well 
learn in larger measure to refrain from forc- 
ing truth upon either one or the other of the 
horns of a dilemma, and from insisting, through 
the voice of any party within her fold, that 
what is eternal in its nature and relationship 
should be delimited into narrow and exclusive 
doctrinal or interpretational expressions, set 
forth with the sanction of a binding authority. 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE CENTRAL GROUND POSITION 

IT cannot be expected that all will occupy 
this position. It is, however, necessary that 
it should be strongly occupied, not alone for 
the defence of the truth held by those who 
maintain the position, but also for the defence 
of those who occupy either one or the other of 
the extreme positions. Without the holders of 
the central ground, the positions of both ex- 
tremes would, from time to time, become un- 
tenable. The occupants of the extreme posi- 
tions are exclusive, and are apt to be partisan. 
Jealous of their own rights, logically convinced 
that they are the chosen champions of the 
Church, without whom she would cease to exist, 
they are ever prone to aggressive warfare. 

177 



178 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

They are disposed to be intolerant of the rights 
and privileges of those from whom they differ. 
They see no reason or justice in the demand for 
the central ground. They say it is an unworthy, 
compromise position. The Church, they say, 
must be either catholic or protestant. Choose 
ye which. 

The Church faces no such necessity. She has 
never, even during the time of Christ, or during 
the life of the apostles, or at any time during 
her history, been exclusively the one or the 
other. She has ever been, and must ever be, 
protestant against all error, in order that she 
may be catholic and inclusive of all truth. 

Those occupying the central ground are not 
appealing in any sense for a via media compro- 
mise settlement. The sacrifice of conviction to 
a compromise level is not asked, because such 
a sacrifice would be unworthy and weak. 

The contention of those of the central ground 
is that the Church should be made and kept 
comprehensive. When the extreme high party 
would seek to impose upon the whole Church 



THE CENTRAL GROUND POSITION 179 

their theories of orders based upon an exclu- 
sive interpretation of the apostolic succession, 
those of the central position become earnestly 
protestant, and intensely catholic. They pro- 
test against contentions which brand those who 
do not accept these interpretations as "dis- 
loyal," "traitors" and "the friends of schis- 
matics." They become ardently catholic in 
their appeal for the love that thinketh no evil, 
and for the claim of a Church comprehensive 
enough for both a Bishop Brooks and the Bishop 
of Fond Du Lac. 

When, on the other hand, the extreme low 
party will hear nothing of priests and apostolic 
succession claims, and ancient catholic prac- 
tices repudiated in the Reformation settlement, 
and would fain force these brethren into Rome, 
calling them "apists" and covenant breakers, 
then the party of the central ground again 
becomes both protestant and catholic and 
pleads for a stay of execution. These men, 
they say, are sincere and devoted. They stand 
by the stake which they consider essential to 



180 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the survival of the tabernacle, and keep ham- 
mering it firmly in the ground. Let them alone. 
You, who are interested in lengthening the 
cords, and stretching the wing of the tent, will 
find some day that the strong pole at the centre, 
which these men have guarded and hammered 
in by tradition, and syllogism, and devotion, has 
given you something rooted and grounded in 
the past to tie to. You are essential to each 
other. Conservatism and enthusiasm; the ec- 
clesiastic and the progressive, are not of ne- 
cessity enemies. They are essentially depend- 
ent. It is a question, after all, of emphasis, 
of conviction, of liberty. 

We have often recalled the assertion made 
by the scholarly and devoted Lord Bishop of 
Kingston, who remarked that "the low and 
evangelical churchman seemed more successful 
in winning men for Christ and His Church, and 
the high churchman seemed more success- 
ful in holding on to them; and the Church 
needed them both." He then quietly observed, 
that "he wished they would stop fighting each 



THE CENTRAL GROUND POSITION 181 

other, because in this they did the Church much 
harm in every way." 

That which gives to the holders of the cen- 
tral position their strength and influence is 
the fact that this class is composed of men 
representing all schools of thought in the 
Church. The extreme high, low, ritualistic, and 
broad churchman, are all found represented 
among those who, while tenacious of their views 
and convictions, are yet men of sufficient breadth 
of sympathy and of comprehensiveness of 
thought to stand together in their contention 
for a Church that shall be inclusive of widely 
divergent views, so long as there is a loyal 
devotion to Christ, and to the spiritual concep- 
tion of the Church as the Body of Christ. 

They recognise that the triumph of either 
extreme wing of the Church would spell dis- 
aster, and would inevitably result in turning 
the Church into a school of thought, or in de- 
grading her to the level of a sect. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE LANGUAGE OF COURTESY AND OF 
CONTROVERSY 

THE term "the Church" is used with va- 
ried significance by the same men under 
different circumstances. In conferences where 
men of different communions are gathered, it is 
applied, by courtesy, to all who, having been 
baptised, profess and call themselves Chris- 
tians, even by men who, in Church paper contro- 
versy, and in their own pulpit utterances, apply 
it to the organisation of the apostolic succes- 
sion alone, using the words "denominations," 
" sectarians, ' ' "our enemies," and "our op- 
ponents" as descriptive of those who "are not 
of the Church." It is a question as to when 
these men are at their best. We do not pre- 

182 



COURTESY AND CONTROVERSY 183 

sume to lay the invidious charge of inconsist- 
ency against them. It is better that men should 
be inconsistent and liberal sometimes, than con- 
sistently narrow all the time. It is, however, 
significant that the mind, when brought into 
the atmosphere of a common spiritual expe- 
rience, should use the term "the Church" in a 
comprehensive sense, even though it confines 
the term to the limits of a logical exclusive- 
ness when in the controversial mood. 

A MATTEB OF EMPHASIS 

There is no question but that in the Anglican 
Church, and in this Church in America, the 
question of the interpretation of the ordinal is 
the crucial question which lies back of prac- 
tically every controversy that claims any 
measure of public attention regarding the 
Church and her divine and human relation- 
ships. Controversies relative to sacraments, 
pulpit exchange, conferences, co-operation, and 
terminology, all have their root in this ultimate 
question of the regularity and validity of or- 



184 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ders. At times one would imagine, from what 
is written by way of interpretation, that Christ 
came into the world to preserve the apostolic 
succession of the ministry, so insistent and vio- 
lent are the assertions made on the subject. 
If there are no sacraments without the Church, 
and no Church without the unbroken succession 
of order, and no covenant of salvation with- 
out sacraments, then well might the Christ have 
lived and died for the establishment and preser- 
vation of the succession. This is not, however, 
where the emphasis is placed in the great 
Gospel of Redemption ; nor is it where the em- 
phasis is placed in the rest of the New Testa- 
ment literature. That a succession was intend- 
ed, and is clearly implied, and was begun, and 
began to be continued, there is evidence. But 
that it was to be made the test of loyalty of 
men to their Lord, or to supersede this mark 
and token of their membership in His Body, is 
not taught in Sacred Scripture. Indeed, the 
contrary teaching is clearly indicated, if not 
implicitly given. 



COURTESY AND CONTROVERSY 185 

The exclusive theory of the succession may 
be applied as a test to ascertain the regularity 
of orders according to this standard. It were 
almost sacrilegious to demand it as a condition 
of a valid ministry in the Church of Christ. 
He gives His clear and visible tokens that this 
irregular ministry is valid for the purpose of 
building men into His Body. And this is surely 
His chief concern. His will that men should 
be saved takes precedence over the form in 
which the Church that helps save them is con- 
stituted. The essential and vital union of the 
souls of men with Him, as Saviour, is the ques- 
tion of prime importance with reference to the 
Church, which is His Body. 



CHAPTER XXin 

THE FENCE THROUGH THE MIDDLE 

GROUND 

IF these words, which are but the feeble effort 
to express a sincere conviction of what we 
earnestly believe is a true and loyal conception 
of a comprehensive and catholic Church, should 
perchance come to the attention of extreme men 
of either the high or low school of thought 
in the Church, we apprehend that the charge 
will be made that, in contending for compre- 
hensiveness, we have straddled the fence upon 
every proposition considered. The charge is 
doubtless true. But who had the right to build 
a fence right across the middle ground of our 
inheritance as the children of God? Who has 
the right to run a hard and fast line through 

m 



PENCE THROUGH THE MIDDLE GROUND 187 

the middle of the Kingdom of God and say that 
the true conception of the Church lies exclu- 
sively on one side of that thought line, or on the 
other? What is a man to do but straddle the 
line when he finds it there, when he believes in 
his heart that the truth is on both sides of it? 
After all, if charges must needs be made, do 
they not lie more against the fence builders 
than against those who are forced to climb and 
sit on the fence in order that they may see 
the far reaches of the fields of truth? But let 
those who straddle the line straddle it widely 
and not stand fast upon it as a via media of 
their own making or choice. The place on the 
top of the fence should never be chosen as a 
compromise position, but as a vantage point of 
wider vision. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
THE PRIEST AND THE MONK 

AS we considered these two pilgrims who, 
among others, were passing in review 
through the present, we asked, does the Church 
need them? Is there room for them in this 
Church? The extreme partisan of the low 
Church party would doubtless answer, "No. 
They antedate the Reformation. They savour 
strongly of sacerdotalism. They hold views for 
which we find no warrant in the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer. Let them go to Rome. ' ' There are 
still among Protestants those who would con- 
sider that, in saying this, they were consigning 
the monk and the priest to perdition. There 
are wide ranges of conviction concerning things 
ecclesiastical among those who profess and call 

188 



THE PRIEST AND THE MONK 189 

themselves Christian, but who call their breth- 
ren by names which must sound wonderfully 
pleasing to the ears of the Devil. 

The question which faces us relative to the 
need and the place for the priest and the monk 
is not as to whether the sacerdotal views of the 
one, or the mediaeval customs of the other, 
square with the standards of this branch of the 
Catholic Church as they now stand printed in 
the Prayer Book, and in the constitution of the 
Church. They themselves being the judges, it 
is admitted that they do not. Their protest 
against the reformation, their appeal to an- 
cient catholic custom, their use of ritual cere- 
monial and vestments which are not sanctioned 
by any authority which this Church, since the 
Eef ormation, has decreed and set forth, is proof 
of the fact that present standards and inter- 
pretations are not, to their minds and to their 
tastes, sufficiently comprehensive. In saying 
this, we are sure we do these men no injustice. 
It is our understanding of their position from 
what they themselves assert and do. Their 



190 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

right to do these things in the light of existing 
standards is a question of conscience upon 
which the writer is not called to sit in judg- 
ment. 

The question of vital importance is: — What 
shall be the policy and attitude of this Church 
to the sacerdotal priest and the monk in the 
days and years which lie ahead of us? It is 
neither right nor wise to leave them stand- 
ing in suspense before the bar of conscience. 
It is well neither for them, nor for bishops, 
charged with the responsibility of discipline, 
that views so widespread and practices so gen- 
erally observed should seem to be in violation 
of the expressed law, or if not so, in opposition 
to the practices and principles authoritatively 
sanctioned. 

It is always dangerous, and frequently mani- 
festly unfair, to present alternatives of choice 
as though they presented the only possible solu- 
tion of a problem. 

It would seem, however, in answer to this 
question of the duty and responsibility of the 



THE PRIEST AND THE MONK 191 

Church, that one of three alternatives faces us. 

In the first place, if the radical contentions 
of the low Church partisan should prevail, this 
other extreme party would be turned .over to 
Rome. But they do not desire to be turned over 
to Rome. They may hope that the time may 
come when the term catholic will not be hyphen- 
ated either with Roman or with Protestant. 
They may desire and help hasten the time when 
Roman and Eastern Catholicism may prove ac- 
ceptable and congenial to them, or when they 
may absorb the Roman or the Eastern Church, 
or both. 

But, as they stand to-day, and as Rome 
stands to-day, they are not in agreement. 
They, therefore, cannot be, nor should they be, 
forced to accept Roman Catholicism as a choice 
between two evils. They would doubtless pre- 
fer to bear what they consider the evils of the 
Church to which they belong, as it now is, 
rather than be forced to fly to other evils that 
they know of full well. 

In the second place, if denied what they be- 



192 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

lieve to be their catholic liberty, they may feel 
constrained to ultimately form a new old 
Catholic Church. The expression a "new 
Catholic Church" is, of course, contradictory, 
and the expression "old Catholic Church" is 
tautological. But everything ecclesiastical 
seems in these days to be involved in contradic- 
tions. The erection of "the Catholics" in the 
Church into a Church apart, called by ,what- 
ever name might be chosen, would be a possi- 
bility, but it would not seem to be a step away 
from schism, or a step toward a closer unity 
in the already fragmentated Body of Christ. 
But if the choice has to be made, as we are told 
it must be made, between protestant and cath- 
olic, then it must be made by those who insist 
upon its being made, and who fail to see that 
the Church, or a large section of it, will insist 
upon remaining protestant in order that they 
may remain catholic in keeping with the historic 
position, which many will continue to believe is 
the catholic position of the Church. 

The third alternative lies in the hope and 



THE PRIEST AND THE MONK 193 

possibility of making this Church comprehen- 
sive, and much more than tolerantly compre- 
hensive, of all schools of spiritually minded 
thought within the Church. 

If this is to be brought to pass, there must of 
necessity be some very large-minded and far- 
reaching thinking done by all who are con- 
cerned. Concessions that are costly will have 
to be made. Clear distinctions will have to be 
drawn between things spiritual and formal, and 
between facts and theories. Positions which 
may seem contradictory, because they are oppo- 
sites, must be admitted possible of tenure in the 
effort to test out their truth in the realm of 
human experience. "When what is cherished as 
precious truth by some, seems darksome error 
to others, then again the attitude of the oppo- 
sition must be, "Let these men alone. If this 
doctrine is of man, it will be brought to naught ; 
if it be of God, beware lest ye be found to fight 
against God. ' ' The judgments of the mind must 
be made in the consciousness of the presence of 
God, Who is Eternal Truth, and Who, in the 



194 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

course of time, will vindicate Himself. The 
deductions of the limited and finite minds of 
controversialists will not be taken as though 
they were the oracles of God. They will be 
examined candidly and given the consideration 
which the thought of one sincere man deserves 
at the bar of another man's judgment. Terms 
of an unbrotherly kind will not be hurled 
through the press and from the battlements of 
Church papers, and from pistols pointed over 
the editor's desk. "Mr. Editor" will not be 
asked to call the man who does not agree with 
the writer a "traitor," or a " schismatic. ' ' 
Such terms will not be used of priests of the 
Church, not yet deposed, by those who would 
themselves wish to be considered possessed of 
the virtues of a Christian man, or the common 
decency which becomes the character of a 
gentleman. 

The priest and the monk should be given 
ample room in the comprehensiveness of the 
Church of the future. The terms of their ten- 
ure of office and position and conviction should 



THE PRIEST AND THE MONK 195 

be made certain, and the settlement should be 
liberal and widely inclusive. 

The priest and the monk should, however, be 
brought to clearly understand that the liberty 
that is to them allowed is not assented to in a 
way that makes their liberty a law of conform- 
ity for the whole Church. They must be 
brought to see very clearly that no matter how 
firm their convictions may be, they are in- 
cluded in the comprehensiveness of the Church 
which also comprehends other views. The leg- 
islation which gives the larger liberty should 
be expressed by the word "May," and not by 
the word "Must." 

If, to this end, those who occupy the middle 
ground shall agree to endeavour to make the 
Church comprehensive of the sacerdotal priest 
and the monk, and to sanction the existence and 
work of inner shrine sacred orders, then the 
priest and the monk must also agree that those 
of the middle ground shall also be left free to 
seek to make the Church inclusive of the prophet 
and placed on conference terms with the protes- 



196 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

tant ministry not of this Church, and brought 
at times, and under pre-accepted conditions, 
into co-operative relationship with any who are 
of the Body of Christ through the sacrament of 
baptism. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE PROPHET AND THE NONCON- 
FORMIST MINISTER 

IF there be those in the comprehensive 
Church of the future who shall desire to 
hear the message of some prophet of God, not 
of the ministry of this Church, liberty must be 
given that this message may be proclaimed and 
judged, as every message is, upon its merit, and 
in view of its harmony with eternal truth. 

If there be those then, as there are those now, 
who desire freely to invite other Christians to 
the Holy Communion of this Church, their lib- 
erty to do so must be granted. Their conten- 
tion that no theory or interpretation should be 
set as a barrier to prevent any child of the 
Father who has openly confessed his faith in 

197 



198 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

Christ as his personal Saviour from receiving 
the strengthening and refreshing of his soul 
by coming to the Communion when he feels 
himself called there by the Spirit of Christ, 
must be freely granted and allowed. 

If there shall be those who desire to partici- 
pate in the future in such communions as the 
one which gave rise to the Kikuyu controversy, 
their liberty to do so must be allowed. 

If there should be those who, in response to 
a spiritual conviction, feel disposed to attend 
the communion of a non-conformist Church, the 
sacerdotal priest and the monk must agree to 
assent that, while they could never do such a 
thing (and, of course, they would never be 
asked to), yet the liberty of the priest or lay- 
man who can, with conscience, do so must be 
by the whole Church allowed. This would by 
no means imply that the whole Church sanc- 
tioned and assented to a parity of orders. It 
would mean this no more than it would mean 
that the whole Church assented to the doc- 
trine of masses for the dead because it per- 



THE PROPHET AND THE NONCONFORMIST 199 

mitted those who did believe in them to have 
communions memorial of the souls of the 
faithful departed. 

The principle here contended for is that the 
whole Church may unanimously agree to per- 
mit the expression of conviction on the part of 
those who constitute a minority, and whose 
views and convictions in no way represent the 
convictions of the majority. 

THE OBJECTION 

The sacerdotal priest and the monk may be 
strongly disposed to object that it would be 
asking too much for them to agree to such a 
procedure as this. Would not our assent to 
such comprehensiveness as that suggested in- 
validate the very fundamental principle of 
succession upon which the Church is founded? 
By no means. This Church in America has 
never expressed its mind on this subject. It 
has never formulated a theory of the succes- 
sion. It says very clearly what is required of 



200 " THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

those wlio are to be accounted ministers in and 
of "this Church." It says nothing as to who 
are to be accounted ministers by this Church. 

For the Church as a whole to make herself 
inclusive of those who would hold fellowship, 
conference, and even communion, with those not 
of this Church, would be neither to sanction nor 
to repudiate any doctrine of the apostolic suc- 
cession. It would simply be to accord to those 
who place upon this doctrine a major empha- 
sis and hold it absolutely essential, the liberty 
to hold their respective convictions, and the 
right to express them. If the General Con- 
vention should, by a majority vote, order that 
all its members should attend a joint commu- 
nion with the Presbyterian General Assembly, 
or of necessity go as delegates to Panama or 
Rome, then convictions would be sacrificed upon 
the altar of tyranny by the power of a majority. 

But for the Church as a whole to legislate 
for the full liberty of any part of it, even though 
that part be but a minority, does in no way, 
and to no degree whatsoever, commit the 



THE PROPHET AND THE NONCONFORMIST 201 

Church as a whole to the view of that minority 
or majority, as the case may be, as being the 
exclusive position held on the question by the 
whole Church. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

NECESSARY RESTRICTIONS UPON 
LIBERTY 

LIBERTY is unbounded in the realms of 
eternal truth, because eternal truth is un- 
bounded. It is, however, contradicted by error. 
In human thought the possibilities of error are 
inherent by reason of the finite nature of the 
human mind. Neither one of two propositions 
is necessarily wholly wrong because they ap- 
pear logically contradictory and exclusive of 
each other. Some truth may inhere in each 
proposition. It often happens that the con- 
tradiction arises out of the inadequacy of a 
statement to include all the elements of truth, 
and all the facts of experience which it assumes 

to comprehend and explain. Within the wide 

202 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 203 

realms of truth, the seeker after it should be 
allowed the widest possible liberty. It should 
also be allowed that ample room and full scope 
should be given in the Church to test various 
aspects of truth in the realm of experience. 

The Church, however, must set certain 
bounds to the thinking process, and to the prac- 
tice which is to prevail with her sanction, in 
order that the integrity of truth may not be 
confused with the disintegrating power of the 
error which is distinctly contrary to the es- 
sence of the truth which she holds, and to 
which she bears witness. 

The necessity for such restriction is seen in 
connection with the liberty which is to be al- 
lowed by the Church to every school of thought 
within her fold. 



BATIONALISM VEESUS THEISM 

The Church may well be not only tol- 
erant but vitally sympathetic with the efforts 
of human reason to comprehend and corre- 



204 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

late the truth; she may insist that views 
that seem logically contradictory may still be 
inclusive of truth, and comprehended within 
the sphere of truth, which may embrace both 
conceptions, and much more than both concep- 
tions suggest or contain. When, however, rea- 
son presumes to deny that which the Church 
exists to affirm ; when reason asserts that there 
is nothing beyond what reason sees, and pro- 
claims that all possible phenomena which are 
worthy of credence must be shown to conform 
to the laws which the mind has already appre- 
hended; when reason denies the supernatural, 
and insists upon reducing the content of reve- 
lation to the test of the physical laboratory, or 
to the measure of natural law, as it has been 
generalised and formulated by material science ; 
and then proceeds upon this basis to deny the 
miraculous, and to repudiate supernatural reve- 
lation : then it becomes the duty of the Church, 
in her defence of the truth, to protest against 
these unwarranted assumptions of the natural 
mind, which have no warrant for their validity, 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 205 

either in the realm of science, or in the realms 
of spiritual experience. For her to embrace 
and tolerate teaching which positively denies or 
insidiously undermines the essence and nature 
of the spiritual truth which she holds as being 
supernatural and as transcending material laws 
and rational speculation, would be to assert 
that she had no distinctive mission. To be com- 
prehensive of the error which denies the es- 
sence of the truth of which she is set to be 
the witness, would be to forfeit her claim to 
having been sent from God to witness to a 
revelation in human experience which tran- 
scends the bounds of human reason. She may 
be tolerant of reverent agnosticism; she may 
be tolerant of reverent skepticism in its search 
for truth, as Christ was tolerant of the doubt 
of Thomas; and she may be tolerant of many 
theories which seek to grasp and explain the 
supernatural, even though these theories may 
appear contradictory. She cannot, however, 
tolerate, and be comprehensive of, the error 
which cuts the very roots of the tree of life 



206 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

which she has been set to water and tend, that 
it and its fruits may be for the healing of the 
nations. 

MATERIALISM VERSUS SPIRITISM 

In the midst of a material world the Church 
of God has been set to be the sacramental sign 
and witness of the spirit world that lies back 
of, and at the foundation of, things visible and 
temporary. It is now, and doubtless always 
will be, quite impossible for the finite mind to 
harmonise completely and to state adequately 
the exact relation and perfect balance of 
the interrelation between form and spirit. The 
material is the sacrament of the spiritual. It is 
the outward and visible manifestation of an 
inward and spiritual reality. Life in and under 
and through the material form presents itself 
in us, and to us, in all our divine and human 
relationship, as it does in our personal expe- 
rience. This fact constitutes the basis of the 
sacramental system and ritual practice of the 
Church. That minds should differ as to the 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 207 

value and need and extent to which the sacra- 
mental and ritual element in the life of the 
Church should be emphasised, is natural, and 
evidential of the fact that the Church compre- 
hends within herself many temperaments of 
soul, and many types of mind. The Church, if 
she is wise in her day and generation, will so or- 
der the bounds of her comprehensive sympathy 
as to embrace the personalities which are ap- 
pealed to, and would make their appeal through 
symbol and sacrament, and who would use both 
largely as means for communicating divine life 
and imparting the truth as to the divine nature. 
She will also provide for making at home within 
her fold those to whom emphasised form and 
ceremony is an obstacle and hindrance to spir- 
itual vision, and who instinctively desire a more 
immediate approach to God than is provided in 
a ritualistic service. 

She must, however, set bounds upon them 
both in the liberty which she allows. These 
limitations should rest not so much in things 
prohibited as in safeguarding the fundamental 



208 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

principles which it is her duty to guard and 
maintain. 

The Church may be ritualistic and yet in- 
tensely spiritual. There are many personali- 
ties so constituted that they could not have 
grown so distinctly spiritual if they had not 
been aided by ritual observances in their ap- 
proach to God. The Church, however, is the 
one institution in this world set to bear witness 
to the Spirit in the midst of things material. 
If she becomes materialistic, she forfeits her 
right to bear witness. If she stoops to be 
flesh in order to win the spirit, she loses 
her chance, and becomes of the world, which 
she can no longer save. When the Church 
substitutes the material for the spiritual, she 
transcends by such transubstantiation her 
power, her right, her liberty and the law 
of her life. The Eternal Son came down, 
and for us men and our salvation, was made 
flesh, and in the form of our humanity, 
dwelt among us, but this He did that He might 
exalt our nature and make us sons of God, and 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 209 

partakers with Him of the divine nature. He 
did not materialise Himself. He spiritualised 
the humanity in which He became incarnate. 
He took our nature upon Him, then through 
sacrifice, and the resurrection and His glorious 
ascension He took it into the eternal Trinity, 
and into eternal atonement with God. The 
Church must restrict the liberty of mind which 
ventures to controvert or deny the truth in- 
herent in, and revealed through the incarnation. 
She cannot suffer those within her fold to sub- 
stitute something material for the living and 
ascended and ever-present Christ. She may 
and does allow men to exalt the sacrament, and 
she permits them to hold many and varied theo- 
ries as to how, in the sacrament, He is, or may 
be present. She denies men the liberty of sub- 
stituting a material thing for the sacrament. 
For, she says, in doing this, you overthrow the 
very nature of the sacrament itself. The 
Church not only has the right, but the duty, to 
guard the integrity of truth. It may not be wise 
for her to insist upon the acceptance of any 



210 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

theory as to how Christ is present in the sacra- 
ment. When men take the consecrated ele- 
ments and say that these are no longer in any 
sense material elements, as your senses would 
lead you to think, but these are Christ; this 
material substance is your very Lord, out- 
wardly present, and here to be gazed upon and 
exalted on the altar, here to be reserved that 
the altar may be sanctified by His presence 
when you are gone, to be carried about as a 
Christ corporal, a Christ that can be put into a 
silver box, and preserved there to be communi- 
cated afterward ; this the Church says she can- 
not understand, and this theory of His pres- 
ence she has repudiated. The Church may, per- 
haps, allow those whose minds admit such a 
materialised conception individually to hold it. 
The Church has the right and the duty to re- 
strict her authorised ministers from teaching 
this to her children. This she has done. Once 
in her articles of religion, she repudiated this 
teaching, and forbade it. Immediately subse- 
quent to the Eeformation, in Jewel's "Apol- 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 211 

ogy," which was set forth by Archbishop Par- 
ker, and published with the consent of Convoca- 
tion, she repudiated this teaching, and since 
then, she has never, by any official sanction, 
permitted this, which she regards as error, to be 
included within the scope of what she regards as 
the liberty of teaching permitted to the priest- 
hood of this Church. She insists that the ma- 
terial shall not be substituted for the spiritual. 
She allows wide liberty of interpretation as to 
how the material symbol and spiritual and real 
Presence may both be taken and received by 
the faithful in the sacrament of His Body and 
Blood. 

It sometimes becomes necessary to restrain 
the lower in order to develop the higher liberty. 
When the liberty given to the mind is used to 
build barriers which confine the spirit; when 
the liberty given to reason is used to forge 
chains which shackle faith; when the lib- 
erty given to thought results in teaching which 
undermines the truth of revelation and the 
facts of divine and human relationship, which 



212 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

are witnessed to in human experience, and 
which are cherished as the truths distinctive of 
the life of faith and devotion ; when the liberty 
of interpretation denies the spiritual concep- 
tion of truth, and insists upon substituting a 
material thing for a spiritual heritage, — then 
the Church, for the sake of souls, for the sake 
of the faith, and in the name of the truth 
for which she is the witness, must deny men 
the liberty to assert that which she cannot 
include within her comprehensiveness without 
becoming not only less comprehensive of truth 
but inclusive of distinctly conflicting error. 

This must, therefore, of necessity be her atti- 
tude to liberty which results in rationalism and 
materialism. 



CONFORMITY VERSUS LIBERTY 

How liberty of conscience and conformity to 
standards can both be preserved has ever been 
the hard problem in the life of the Church. The 
spirit is alive and vital. The form is created 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 213 

to be its body, its means of expression. The 
one grows ; the other is officially static until, by 
authority, it is recast. To what extent the 
spirit of God, to what extent the spirit of wor- 
ship has been trammelled and delimited by fixed- 
ness of form is a question which affords ground 
for interesting speculation, but which defies 
positive answer. The value of corporate wor- 
ship under prescribed forms, the advantage of 
creating and maintaining through a cherished 
liturgy the continuity of the spirit of devotion, 
and the enriching power of association with 
services long and devotedly used, doubtless 
overbalance the objection to the limitation of 
the spirit of worship under the prescribed 
forms of worship. That the spirit of devotion 
often transcends and outgrows the forms pro- 
vided for corporate worship has been the rea- 
son which has ever led the way to liturgical 
enrichment in the Church of God. It is always 
permissible for men in the Church to feel the 
need for a larger liberty in liturgical expres- 
sion. It is also permissible for men to ask 



214 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the liberty of expressing their devotion in the 
corporate life of the Church in a freer expres- 
sion than prescribed forms will allow. It would 
be well for the Church to give heed to every 
reasonable demand which is made upon her by 
the spirits of men in their desire to worship 
God in the beauty of holiness, and in the en- 
richment of form, and in the freedom of spirit. 
She may well consider the fact that tempera- 
ments radically differ, and that wide liberty 
should be allowed in her devotional formularies 
and rubrics for the outgoing heart of man in 
praise, adoration and petition. 

The Church which gives to her children the 
right and the opportunity through due proc- 
esses of legislation to voice and register their 
desires and convictions, may reasonably demand 
and expect that her formulas of devotion will 
be used, and her rubrics adhered to, pending 
the time when changes may be asked for and, if 
reasonable, secured. It should always be hoped 
that a majority would not deny to a minority of 
seekers for a closer communion with God the 



RESTRICTIONS UPON LIBERTY 215 

liberty of any reasonable form and expression 
of devotion so long as the integrity of her 
liturgical use is preserved according to her 
direction. 

A spiritually disposed Church, and bishops 
who are not slaves to the letter, will ever see 
that any reasonable and spiritually profitable 
usage is allowed, if by it men's hearts are, 
without offence to others, more surely and 
closely brought into communion with God. Uni- 
formity of worship is not nearly so essential 
to the glory and good of the Church as is a 
comprehensive system of worship, in and un- 
der which men will be obedient to law and sub- 
missive to authority. Non-conformity allowed 
is surely better than ecclesiastical anarchy. 
Priests who are themselves persistently dis- 
obedient to the law of the Church, can hardly, 
with consistency, insist upon the obedience to 
parents and others in authority, which is taught 
in the catechism of the Church. One would 
think that our Bishops would gladly welcome 
more comprehensiveness in liturgical usage with 



216 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the hope that, as Fathers in God, they would 
not be troubled with the spirit of persistent 
disobedience which now characterises so many 
of their priestly children. 

The rule for churchmen with reference to the 
liturgy might well be : — Contend for liberty if 
your spirit of devotion feels confined, but obey 
the law while it lasts. Sometimes the best way 
to get a law changed is by a mutual agreement 
to observe it scrupulously. If everybody breaks 
it, the result is unlicensed non-conformity. 

Law and form have always been and always 
will be essentially related to the survival and 
expression of the spirit of liberty both in the 
state and in the Church. License of thought 
and expression, while they have ever sought 
to cloak themselves with the garb of liberty, 
have ever been enemies to the development of 
the true spirit of freedom. 



CHAPTER XXVn 
THE PERILS OF PROTESTANTISM 

THE student of contemporaneous religious 
life and thought perceives that the path 
of progress is beset with perils. The dangers 
which beset Protestantism are largely of a kind 
distinctly opposite from those which beset and 
pervert the mind of the so-called "Catholic 
party' ' in the Church. Protestant weaknesses 
come largely from the over rebound from the 
exclusive claims and demands of ecclesiasti- 
cism. In many instances they arise from wrong, 
or disproportionate, emphasis upon certain 
aspects of truth. The Church of the reconstruc- 
tion should be careful to observe them, and to 
note the causes which have led men to turn into 
by-paths, and, at times, to get stuck in snow 
drifts, or to lose themselves in the wilderness. 

217 



218 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

INDIVIDUALISTIC SALVATION 

The emphasis placed by Protestantism upon 
the value of the human soul has not been too 
great. It has, at times, been too exclusive. 
This has resulted in a certain type of ex- 
aggerated individualism. The duty of the mem- 
ber to be in himself sound and spiritually alive 
has not been correlated with the duty of the 
member of the Body corporate. 

The recognition of this weakness has in some 
instances led Protestant communions to over- 
emphasise social service as the cure for an in- 
dividualistic conception of salvation. Social 
service sends the soul out to find its corporate 
life in serving social needs. While this fulfills 
in part the requirement for the expression of 
the life that has been saved through Christ, it 
does not make provision for the sure and con- 
tinued salvation of the life in Christ, which 
comes from the close incorporation of the in- 
dividual into His Body through the constant 
use of the spiritual sacramental system of 



THE PERILS OF PROTESTANTISM 219 

the Church. While it is true that the Church 
exists to save and to help the individual, it is 
also the duty of the individual to build his 
personality into the corporate life of the 
Church, that the Body may, through him, be 
made more strong for fulfilling its mission, 
and in order that, through the Body, his own 
life may daily increase in that spiritual life 
which, through the Body, is supplied. 

LETTING DOWN THE BARS 

In the rebound from the Church, cumbered 
by superadded intensive notes of dogma and 
ritual, there is the danger of seeking to make 
the Church so extensive in its comprehension 
that it will include, by invitation and accept- 
ance, those who do not comply with, because 
they do not have explained to them, the ele- 
mental and essential terms of salvation in and 
through Jesus Christ. It is possible so com- 
pletely to rationalise and despiritualise its 
teaching as to exclude from it the distinctive 



220 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and essential notes of its Christian character 
and divine mission to men. The bars may be let 
down so low that those who are let in scarcely 
know whether they are on the inside or on the 
outside. This is done when men are told that 
it makes no difference what they believe if they 
live rightly, as though men could live rightly if 
they did not first believe aright. This is done 
when a credal basis for character building is re- 
pudiated because, perchance, there have been 
those who have mistaken, and substituted the in- 
tellectual acceptance of credal statements for a 
vital credal faith. This is done when Christ 
is debased to the level of the power of the hu- 
man reason to accept Him, and when, because 
there is no response of spiritual faith, He is 
offered as a mere man (God's best man), to the 
natural mind. The Unitarian may do this and 
be consistent, the Christian minister cannot do 
this and be consistent with, or loyal to, the 
fundamental charter of the Christian Church 
whose mission is to preach Christ as the divine 
and incarnate Son of God. 



THE PERILS OF PROTESTANTISM 221 

If the Bible has no voice back of it save the 
voice of man, and no spirit of inspiration save 
that of human genius ; if Christ be naught save 
an example, if He be relegated to history as 
the world's greatest hero, and be not pro- 
claimed, as He proclaimed Himself, the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever, the Son, to 
whom the weary and heavy laden may come and 
find salvation and power and peace ; if His sac- 
raments are accounted as meaningless ordi- 
nances which may be used or dispensed with 
according to the individual whims of men ; and 
if the Christian ministry be intrusted indiscrim- 
inately to any who may desire to take this name 
and office upon themselves, without having been 
called, carefully examined, and, by recognised 
authority, ordained ; then the Christian Church 
will have lost every note of authority, and every 
distinctive reason for claiming the confidence, 
the support, and the following of men. 



222 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

THE MATEKIALISED CHUEOH 

If there be reason to charge that the Episco- 
pal Church lays undue stress and dispropor- 
tionate emphasis upon her orders, her forms 
and ceremonies, and her sacramental system, 
there is, on the other hand, reason to believe 
that Protestant Churches, not of the Episcopal 
Order and Communion, frequently obscure the 
spiritual character and claim of the Church by 
other exaggerated forms of material ministra- 
tion. That the Church has a social function 
to perform, is unquestionably true, and that 
the element of fellowship in the Episcopal 
Church is frequently not sufficiently developed 
and emphasised is true also, but it is equally 
true that, in the practical administration of 
many Protestant organisations, the appeal made 
through the social and material functions of the 
Church is so over-emphasised as to be in dan- 
ger of excluding the emphasis upon the dis- 
tinctive spiritual claims of the Church. The 
six-day-in-the-week gymnasium, the social clubs, 



THE PERILS OF PROTESTANTISM 223 

the incessant supping and dining, the debating 
societies, the before-service supper and the 
after-service tea, the special music programme, 
the advertised Sunday evening concert, the ap- 
peal to curiosity through the sensational topic 
display and the worshipless character of many 
preaching services, all tend to impress the pub- 
lic mind with the idea that the Church is panic- 
stricken, that it has lost its faith, its courage 
and its supreme conviction as to its distinctive 
mission to witness to the spiritual truth and 
power of the Kingdom of God. The danger is 
that many will join the Church because it offers 
cheaper club and gymnasium and recreation fa- 
cilities than they could get elsewhere. The ex- 
cessive material emphasis is not calculated to 
create spiritual-mindedness. While there are 
circumstances which unquestionably justify the 
existence of the institutional Church, it is never- 
theless true that the nature of its appeal tends 
to obscure the spiritual appeal, and constitutes 
a danger which, at times, rises to a point of 
peril in Protestant Christianity. 



224 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

SOCIAL SERVICE AS A THING APART 

One of the distinctly vital and encouraging 
phases of current Church life is the emphasis 
which is being placed on social service. It is 
indicative of the recognition by the Church of 
a large responsibility to serve. It is the man- 
ward expression of the Christian conscious- 
ness. It is the fulfillment of the second com- 
mandment given by our Blessed Lord, enjoin- 
ing love to our neighbour, who is the other needy 
child of God. 

The danger in this realm of Christian activity 
lies in the possibility, and in the disposition 
sometimes seen, to substitute social service for 
the corporate worship of God. The two duties 
are not antagonistic. They are complementary 
to each other. Worship without service becomes 
formal and impotent. Social service, without 
the vital background of spiritual experience 
kept alive through the services and sacraments 
of the Church, is sure to become mechanical, per- 
functory and void of constructive and vitalising 



THE PERILS OP PROTESTANTISM 225 

spiritual inspiration. It tends to eliminate the 
spiritual elements of personal sympathy, and 
the creative power of faith and love. As an ex- 
pression of a divinely kindled desire to serve, 
as the outgoing of the ever-incoming spirit of 
God, as the translation of the great Gospel of 
redemption into terms which are understood of 
men, social service furnishes a great liberating 
and constructive programme for the manifesta- 
tion of the spirit of Christ, and is a distinctive 
and indispensable part of the one great mission 
of the Church. As a substitute for the worship 
of God in the services and ordinances of His 
Church, it is a delusion of a most dangerous 
kind. Eeconstructed life must be built upon 
eternal foundations, it must be incorporated 
into the life divine, if it is to be permanent and 
progressive in the evolution of the social order. 
There is always grave peril of perverting or 
distorting an idea, which, when held in its 
proper relation to God and man, is fraught with 
vast potency for good. 

The greatest Servant of men found, and ever 



226 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

maintained, the due proportion and proper bal- 
ance between silence with God and service to 
men. Worship and work were inseparably 
bound together in His consciousness of His 
divine relationship and His human mission. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE PERIL OF ORDERS 

THE human mind is ever prone to misuse 
the great gifts of God. Out of this dis- 
position has grown the idol-worship of the 
world. The revelation, the instrument, the 
means, becomes an end itself. The Jews came 
to worship their temple and their law, and then 
their idols, and lost the vision of God. Until 
rebuked and forbidden by them, the supersti- 
tious barbarians of Lycaonia would fain have 
worshipped the apostles. The Roman Church 
has deified the Virgin, and exalted the pope to a 
place almost co-equal with Christ. Protestants 
at times have made the letter of Scripture the 
pope of Protestantism. 

And what have we done! We have empha- 

227 



228 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sised the necessity for valid and regular or- 
ders. We have exalted the sacramental sys- 
tem of the Church. We have capitalised ' ' The 
Church.' 9 We have glorified the ritual of our 
worship. We have created what Billy Sunday 
asserts is the best governed and ordered Church 
in Christendom. In all this we cannot be fairly 
charged with having done amiss. But our 
course has been, and still is, beset with perils. 
We have not always been mindful of them. 
We are in constant danger of becoming unmind- 
ful of them. The danger lies in making an end 
of what God ordained to be a means to an end. 
We constantly face the peril of becoming slaves 
to the system that was ordained to make men 
free. 

The peril does not present itself especially 
to the priestly mind. The danger is not so 
much that he will become a materialist, though 
he sometimes does, but that the laity will not 
see through the form and system to the spirit- 
ual verities of which it is intended to be, and 
really is, the sign and symbol. The form and 



THE PERIL OF ORDERS 229 

ritual, which is intended to project the soul into 
the spiritual realm, is in danger of arresting 
the attention and of enchaining the soul to the 
over-emphasised symbol. The priest has used 
the organisation in a way to make him recog- 
nise it as an organism into which he is incorpo- 
rated. He has found every form, and institu- 
tion, and interpretation of his order, and sacra- 
mental theory, a means of blessing vital and 
deeply spiritual for himself. He magnifies the 
importance of form, he preaches the Church 
persistently, he proclaims as indispensable his 
interpretation of the ordinal, and holds up the 
sacrament to the gaze of the people. All this 
the priest may do with personal, conscious rev- 
erence, and yet be unmindful of the perils which 
beset his people by reason of his emphasis upon 
sign and symbol, and visible sacrament, and 
the ordered succession, and the Holy Church. 

The peril lies in the danger that the people 
will not see through and beyond. Their faith is 
in peril of being arrested by their senses. It is 
liable to stop short. It is prone to substitute the 



230 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sign for the thing signified. Worship then be- 
comes formal. Materialism dominates spiritu- 
ality. The organisation, magnified and glori- 
fied, then assumes a disproportionate place in 
the lay consciousness. He swears by the 
Church, but he swears. He bows low before the 
altar, but he bows lower in the house of Rimmon, 
and in the temples of Mammon. He feels the 
glow of dim religious lights, and a certain sense 
of aesthetic devotion, and a dim consciousness of 
a pleasing spiritual warmth. He has touched 
the garment of Christ. That Christ also by 
many thousands is touched we know full well. 
But that 'there are perils here we know full well 
also, and they need to be recognised and con- 
stantly guarded against. 

Then, too, we are liable to put our trust in the 
power, and in what we regard as the potent per- 
fection, of the organisation. Conscious of our 
sure and certain incorporation into the Church ; 
conscious of its dignity, its order, its inherent 
worth, we are prone to delude ourselves with 
the idea that this in itself is sufficient, Men 



THE PERIL OF ORDERS 231 

sometimes fail, in their sense of conscious se- 
curity, to realise that they may be in and of 
the Body of Christ and yet not of His mind 
and Spirit. Thus they become paralysed mem- 
bers of His Body. 

Membership in a Church so largely magnified 
by its priesthood, so potent in its organisation, 
so strongly and conspicuously formal and so 
rich in its symbolic significance, is ever in dan- 
ger of being assumed and maintained as a sub- 
stitute, rather than as a vital means of incor- 
porating the soul into union with the life of 
God, and into close fellowship and conscious 
communion with Christ Himself. The term 
Churchman is not always the synonym of the 
term Christian. The Church may be writ large, 
and the Christ be but faintly inscribed in the 
consciousness of man. 

These reflections do not constitute in any 
sense a charge against the Church as a well- 
ordered organism, with outward and visible 
signs and means of grace. They simply point 
to the perils to which the priest and the people, 



232 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and especially the people, are exposed in view 
of the very perfect nature of the organisation. 
The more perfect the human side of a divine in- 
stitution becomes, the more liable men are to 
substitute it for the divine. The glory of the 
temple obscured from materialistic-minded men 
the glory of God. The perfection of the man- 
hood of our Master has obscured from many 
minds the divinity of which His manhood was 
but the incarnation. The foreground beauty 
may hide the background life and glory of 
which it is the manifestation. The frame may 
be made so golden, and so bejewelled that the 
eye will rest there and not see the beauty of 
the face upon the canvas. 

It is possible for the Church to become so 
enamoured of her orders that she may fail to 
hear the orders of her Lord and Master. It is 
possible for her to rest so surely in the confi- 
dence of her rich possessions, and glorious 
heritage, that she may fail to hear the voice 
of her Lord in the cry of the world's need, call- 
ing her to Christlike humility of mind, and bid- 



THE PERIL OF ORDERS 233 

ding her come down, as He did, to self -forgetful 
service, to be misjudged and crucified, that in 
the end He might be highly exalted, and given 
a Name above every name, and worshipped and 
adored as the Son of God who came down from 
heaven to be the Saviour and Lord of men. 

We need to beware lest our position of exclu- 
sive aloofness is not born of pride, and the over- 
consciousness of power. The age is saying far- 
reaching and deep-searching words about a new 
conception of divine rights. It is insisting that 
such claims be interpreted in terms of democ- 
racy, or else give way to a new order which 
shall be responsive to the elemental and im- 
perious needs of the children of God of love, 
and to the leadership of His Spirit. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

WHAT WOULD BECOME OF THE 
PRAYER BOOK? 

THE good sense of the Church can be 
trusted to take care that the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer shall continue to represent the 
normal position arrived at by successive genera- 
tions. This has always been the case in the 
past. If extreme or radical views prevail at 
any time and become embodied in the authorised 
devotions of the Church, their permanent place 
in the liturgy will depend upon the test of their 
permanent worth in the experience of a living 
Church. There is no reason for one generation 
to become panic-stricken because of innovations 
or restrictions or alterations in the devotional 
expressions of the liturgy. The ship has passed 

234 



THE PRAYER BOOK 235 

through seas as rough and storms as violent 
as any which are apt* to lie ahead. If there be 
tempests that are worse, which must yet be met, 
we may be very sure that, if Christ remains at 
the helm, we will come to the haven where He 
would have us be. If He be forced to leave 
the helm by our insisting upon steering the 
ship, then the sooner she founders the better. 

We should by all means make His task as 
easy as we can. There are surely none in the 
Church who would deliberately plan to do other- 
wise. We should more largely trust each other, 
and more earnestly endeavour to prove our- 
selves worthy of trust. By fairness and con- 
sideration; by forbearance and self-restraint; 
by honest candour of speech and humility 
of mind and heart; by seeking to keep every 
avenue of approach to God widely open, and 
thus refusing to lend our voice and influence 
to close any channel of grace through which 
divine love flows into human life; by thinking 
more humbly and loving more comprehensively ; 
we will come into the possession of the spirit 



236 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of power and of a sound mind, that will en- 
able us to perceive and know what we ought 
to do in providing for the expression of the 
faith and devotion of the people of God. 

In this Church the people have a large voice. 
Their influence for restraint is final and all pow- 
erful. The laity have the power of veto over all 
legislation in this Church, so that nothing can 
be consummated in the way of change or addi- 
tion which does not commend itself to their 
judgment. As a class they deplore religious 
controversy. It is usually the priests, rather 
than the people, who agitate for radical changes 
in doctrinal statements and devotional expres- 
sion. The average layman is content, if he comes 
to Church at all, to say the creed which the 
Church has formulated, and to use the liturgy 
which the Church has sanctioned, if it is said 
with a spirit of devotion, and in a voice that can 
be clearly understood by the people. The tem- 
pests of controversy which sweep through 
Church papers and stir priestly minds to foam- 
ing and seething agitation, either do not stir 



THE PRAYER BOOK 237 

the laity very deeply, or stir them to the ex- 
pression of deep regret that, with so many 
vital and pressing problems to face, the Chnrch 
should waste so much energy in internecine war- 
fare, and in the bitterness of partisan strife. 

The laity is led to wonder if perhaps too much 
time is not being spent in seminaries in teaching 
men to split hairs rather than in training them 
to be strong to level mountains, and prepare 
the way for the larger and fuller coming of the 
spirit of the Lord. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE DEFENCE AND THE EXEMPLIFI- 
CATION OF THE POWER OF ORDERS 

IN all that has been said, we have not been 
unmindful of the necessity of preserving 
unimpaired the historic heritage of this branch 
of the Holy Catholic Church. The preserva- 
tion through centuries of trial of the unbroken 
continuity of the threefold orders of ministry 
has had, and must continue to have, a witness- 
bearing power in the Body of Christ. 
When we consider that the ministry of the 
Church was instituted and ordered to be per- 
petuated prior to the time when the New Tes- 
tament was written in any of its parts; when 
we recall that the ministry was appointed to be 
the custodian, the guardian, and the witness of 

238 



THE POWER OF ORDERS 239 

the truth ; when we consider the credence given 
by continuity to the genuineness and authentic- 
ity of the written revelation, and the practical 
experience of man in his relationship with God 
under the terms of the New Covenant promise, 
we are deeply conscious of the supreme obliga- 
tion to be faithful to this transmitted trust. 

While we have no right to give away what is 
not ours to dispense with save upon the terms 
and conditions which will secure the continued 
and lawful transmission of the trust, we have 
not only the right but the duty also, to use the 
trust in the service for righteousness in such 
a way as will add to its value in the largest pos- 
sible measure. To hold the trust and add to it 
ten talents besides, is the kind of stewardship 
which this Church should seek to exercise. 

There is need in the Church for those who will 
stand by this central stake and defend it, and 
drive it in deep, and make it permanently se- 
cure. There is the same kind of need that this 
should be done as there is that the centripetal 
force in the universe should be preserved. In 



240 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

the light of this illustration, it is instinctively 
seen that the living Christ is of course the great 
centripetal force of the Church, but we are 
speaking now of the organic life of the Church, 
and here, also, the principle is true. 

The defenders of the central stake in the or- 
ganisation must in all candour recognise that 
the need for its security lies in the fact that the 
cords must be pulled far and lengthened. They 
must not insist that the tent cords be tightly 
wrapped around the central pole. The fact 
that they are allowed to be carried far by those 
who would make the tent covering very wide 
spread and comprehensive, shows the confidence 
imposed by them in the pole at the centre to 
stand the strain. If the men who would fain 
carry the cords very far afield seem to those 
at the centre pole to be running riot, or depart- 
ing too far afield, let it be remembered that 
they do so because of their supreme trust in 
the strength of the central stake to stand the 
strain. If those at the stake will not go forth 
with those who run with the cords to lengthen 



THE POWER OP ORDERS 241 

them far, let it be recognised that they remain 
at their task of defending the stake, that it may 
not be pulled up and carried away by the cord 
lengtheners. The centrifugal force is safe and 
constant only so long as the power which holds 
things to the centre is preserved and exercised. 
We need each other. We need the stake. We 
need the lengthened cord. The world's need 
calls for a wide-stretched tabernacle. Keep the 
central stake strong and fast. Trust the cord 
lengtheners to exercise the faith that they feel 
in knowing that things at the centre are guarded 
and kept so secure that they are not afraid of 
uprooting the stake by largely lengthening the 
cords. We should not call by ill-sounding names 
those who feel called of God to keep guard at 
the centre, and who labour to keep the stake 
well grounded in the ancient truth. They surely 
should not call those disloyal who show such 
supreme faith in the stake at the centre, that 
they are willing to tie their cords around the 
hearts of men far removed, and entwine the out- 
stretched cords about the forces of righteous- 



242 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ness everywhere, and even venture to cast a 
life line into the teeth of the tempest, and out 
upon the darkness of the sea to the ship disabled 
because they believe that the stake divinely set 
and guarded by faithful men will hold fast at 
the centre. What is needed in the Church is 
the larger confidence which should be felt among 
men who are brothers and builders together 
of the tabernacle of God among men. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

WHAT WE MAY AND WHAT WE CAN- 
NOT HOLD 

WE may hold our theories. We may tena- 
ciously hold to exclusive interpretations 
of our orders and sacraments. We may hold 
to the determination to magnify the outward, 
the formal, the material side of the Church. 
We may hold to our insistence upon the su- 
preme importance of a perfected organisation 
to be maintained and consummated at any cost. 
We may hold to our exclusive titles, and to 
our exclusive claims, and to our exclusive po- 
sition. But we cannot hold the people if we 
emphasise these things to the exclusion of the 
spiritual appeal and the spiritual gifts. 

The deep heart of humanity feels, and, at 
times, clearly sees, the nature and quality and 

243 



244 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

richness of its birthright. The thirst for God 
is imperious. The longing for the conscious- 
ness of communion with Him, and for the pos- 
session of His love and His power and His 
healing, cleansing life is ever present, though, 
at times, obscured in the soul. 

The appealing power of Moody and of Billy- 
Sunday over multitudes of men, and the grow- 
ing strength of the distinctly spiritual appeal 
and spiritual emphasis of Christian Science, are 
both distinct evidences of the power of the peril 
which inheres in the tendency to materialise 
and secularise the Church, and bear witness to 
the peril of substituting in the minds of our 
people the form, the order, and the organisa- 
tion in place of the living, vital witness to the 
personal saving and healing Christ. 

If there should be placed a more insistent and 
definite emphasis upon the spirit of Christ, and 
less upon the form of the Church; if in place 
of magnifying the organisation, we should con- 
secrate ourselves to spiritualise more deeply the 
individual and the Church as a vital organism; 



WHAT WE MAY AND CANNOT HOLD 245 

if we should become less exclusive in our con- 
sciousness and more responsive to the oppor- 
tunities for service, more deeply imbued with 
the spirit of love and fellowship, and more will- 
ing to vindicate our orders and organisation by 
using them in co-operation with other forces of 
God's constituted Kingdom, is there not every 
reason found in the revelation of the mind and 
purpose of Christ to believe that He will be 
true to His promise that against His Church the 
gates of hell shall not prevail! 

Having for so long pursued the course of an 
exclusive claim and of an isolated position, it 
might be well for this Church to try the experi- 
ment of following the Master, with those others 
whom He is leading, into a more vital and spirit- 
ual co-operative effort to inspire the minds of 
men and the ideals of nations, that they be no 
longer conformed to the standards of the world, 
but transformed by the renewing of the spirit 
of the living God. 

In doing this the Church would doubtless win 
and hold a larger following of spiritually 



246 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

minded men, and the larger fruitage which 
would be gathered from the harvest fields of the 
world would more largely commend our orders 
to the consideration and esteem of those who 
will increasingly turn to those things which 
have manifested their worth and power in the 
practical and vital experience of the Church. 



CHAPTER XXXII 
ANCIENT LANDMARKS 

BY some it will be charged that in what is 
being contended for we are removing an- 
cient landmarks. There are Biblical injunc- 
tions against doing this. This is unquestion- 
ably true. These injunctions, however, were 
pronounced against those who sought, by re- 
moving ancient landmarks, to delimit the pos- 
sessions, and infringe upon the inheritance 
rights of other tribes in the Covenant Kingdom 
We would disclaim any intention of doing this 
with the landmarks of either truth or Church 
polity. 

The Church may well pause to ask if the 
landmarks hitherto set by her do mark aright 
the scope of the spiritual inheritance of the chil- 

247 



248 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

dren of the Christian covenant promise. Christ 
found them set to bounds that had been made 
too narrow, and removed them to mark the 
bounds of a Church more comprehensive. And 
in the hole from which He had removed the 
landmark of tradition, they set up a cross, "and 
there they crucified Him." It is well, also, to 
bear in mind that the men who doomed Him to 
death were led by the High Priest of ecclesiasti- 
cal "orthodoxy." 



paet in 

CONFERENCE— CO-OPEBATION— UNITY 

"Oh, like to the greatness of God is the great- 
ness within 

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes 
of Glynn." 

# # # # # 

"Ye marshes, how candid and simple and noth- 
ing-withholding and free 
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer your- 
selves to the sea!" 

7r ^F ^F ^F ^F 

*'And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out 

of his plenty the sea 
Pours fast:" 

"fp ^ ^F tF ^f 

"Till his waters have flooded the uttermost 

creeks and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the 
marsh-grass stir;" 

# * # # # 

"And the sea and the marsh are one" 

Sidney Lanier. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 
AEE WE PREPARED? 

FOR many years the Christian Church 
prayed for an open door into heathen 
lands. At last the door was opened. From be- 
yond it came the voices of millions lying in dark- 
ness, saying, "Come over and help us." Ma- 
terialism, parochialism and selfishness gripped 
and enchained the heart of the Church, and the 
doors opened by prayer have not been entered 
yet by a Church passing through them with gar- 
ments dyed in the blood of her own priestly 
sacrifice. Through open doors still come the 
cries of the Father's children in the deep dark- 
ness. They are crying for light. From the 
silence of the sanctuary into which He passed 
through sacrifice, there comes a voice which asks 

251 



252 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

why, having so long prayed, stand ye here so 
long idle before the door which I have opened 
to you? 

For many years the Church has prayed, as 
her Master prayed, that they all might be one. 
Intercessions have been offered for an open 
door to unity. Wider to-day than ever before 
the door stands open. Are we prepared to enter 
in? It does not open into a unity perfected and 
immediate in its organic completeness. It is 
open, however, to avenues of approach. Ways 
that lead to fellowship and understanding, and 
to a sympathetic appreciation of each other's 
view points, are ways that lead to ultimate 
unity. There are many who feel convinced 
that they are the only ways lit by the light of 
a reasonable hope. 

The Church that refuses to give official sanc- 
tion to those of her communion who feel that 
they see this open door, and are assured that 
they hear the Spirit's voice calling them, as- 
sumes a grave responsibility. If to invitations 
and opportunities for official and corporate co- 



ARE WE PREPARED? 253 

operation, to be engaged in by those who are 
willing and desirons of doing so, the Church 
turns a deaf ear, she will most surely prejudice 
the great Protestant Communions against the 
sincerity and spirit of sacrifice which prompts 
her to suggest discussions and conferences on 
1 ' faith and order. ' ' Why should not the Protes- 
tant Communions make reasonable reply that 
they would not care to consider or accept orders 
so exclusive and binding as to preclude confer- 
ence and co-operation with other members of 
the Body of Christ living in non-conformity, 
but living still in vital union with Jesus Christ f 

The world crisis demands spiritual leader- 
ship. We know not what to-morrow has in 
store. Orders have proven no barrier to blood- 
shed. Greek and Romanist are fighting each 
other. Romanists are fighting Romanists, and 
Protestants are fighting Protestants and fight- 
ing with Romanists and fighting against them. 
There is chaos in the world. 

In America, official corruption, and indus- 
trial enmity, and greed and materialism are 



254 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

rampant. Has the Church failed! She has 
surely failed to put her emphasis on the right 
things, or in the right proportion. She has 
failed in vision, and in statesmanship and in 
power. She has failed to measure up to her 
high calling in Christ Jesus. She has come to 
judgment. She has not come to her doom. 
She can point to many achievements. Because 
of her ministry there is a keener conscience and 
a closer brotherhood among men. The world 
to-day is more easily shocked because stand- 
ards are higher. In private and public life 
ideals of a nobler kind are leading men into a 
richer and more abundant life. In spite of 
her materialism and blindness, the Christ, 
through His Church, has still been able to say 
and do many things. 

In the presence of stupendous problems, and 
face to face with the day of her greatest op- 
portunity, the Church, divided, stands to-day 
impotent for her task. 

Barriers of separation built by incompetent 
and inadequate thought-processes, created by 



ARE WE PREPARED? 255 

ancient prejudices, and erected by mental and 
finite interpretations of the great uninterpret- 
able, eternal truth of God, divide the Church, 
and weaken her power to witness, and her ca- 
pacity to lead men and nations into liberty. 

In the presence of our self -created weakness ; 
with the memory of our failures and shortcom- 
ings; conscious as we must be of having done 
many things amiss, and left undone many things 
which might have helped to heal His broken 
and divided Body; shall not we who profess and 
call ourselves Christians turn in these days 
from endless and formal academic discussions 
to penitential litanies, and ask God to have 
mercy upon us and to forgive ? 

Is it not a time for humility of mind and 
contriteness of heart? Is it a time for men of 
a common faith and a common purpose to stand 
apart? Shall cold stone barriers of logical 
conviction stem and hinder the flow of the spirit 
of Christian fellowship and the largest possible 
measure of Christian conference and co-opera- 
tion? 



256 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

What would happen if our Bishops should 
unite in calling all Christian communions in 
America who would heed the call into a great 
representative conference ; saying : — ' ' Brethren, 
come, let us go up into the mount of the Lord 
and pray and reason together. Our sins have 
been as scarlet, yet He will have mercy and for- 
give. The world is calling us. Christ is calling 
us. Let us not in this great crisis moment stand 
divided. We are one Body in Christ, and one 
in essential faith, and one in charity. Let us 
take counsel together. Let us ask Him, who 
is our common Lord and Master, what word 
He would speak through us to this nation and 
to the nations of the world. Let us, with an 
apostolic spirit, say, 'Lord, what wilt thou have 
us do?' and rising from a national council of 
penitence and prayer, let us follow Him who 
has promised to be with us to the end of the 
world, and to lead us into all truth. Come! 
that through us, His Body, He may speak His 
message, and work His will in this crisis of the 
world." 



CHAPTER XXXIV 
THE CHALLENGE 

PROBLEMS face us stupendous in their 
character and extent. Great questions of 
education, of social service, of missionary en- 
devour, of healing the breach among the na- 
tions, of establishing a just and abiding peace, 
press for solution. Ignorance, social injustice, 
nations waiting to be born, and nations waiting 
to be led into a great world federation, cry aloud 
to a divided Church for light, and love, and 
liberty, and guidance. What shall we do about 
it? A great oncoming wave of democracy is 
sweeping up and onward in the sea of life. Back 
of it are great elemental impulses, longings, de- 
sires and hopes. Greatest among them is the 
impulse of liberty, the search for truth, the 

257 



258 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

undefined, vague, and unsatisfied longing for 
God. 

In this approaching crisis what shall be the 
attitude of this Church? Shall we stand apart! 
Are our orders so uncertain that we dare not 
confer and co-operate, with full official sanction, 
with those whose orders are different in every 
respect from our own, for fear that our orders 
will be compromised, or that we will be mis- 
understood! 

Are we sufficiently sure that His promise to 
"be with the ministers of apostolic succession' ' 
was a promise also not to be with the ministers 
who are not of the apostolic succession as we 
define it! Are we sure that He is not with 
them! If He is, why should we not be? Are we 
more sacred in our orders, and more exclusive 
in our fellowship, than is He from whom our 
orders are derived, and from whom they have 
their authority! Do we doubt His promise! 
If He will indeed be with the ministers of 
apostolic succession to the end of the world, 
will He not also guard and keep the succession 



THE CHALLENGE 259 

if the orders sanctioned by it confer, co-operate, 
and hold Christian fellowship with those with 
whom He Himself confers, co-operates and 
holds close fellowship and communion! 



CHAPTER XXXV 
"THE CHURCH" AND "THIS CHURCH" 

OUR Church standards speak very definite- 
ly as to what is required of her children, 
and of those who are authorised to officiate as 
her ministers. In the preface to the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, and in the preface to the Ordinal, 
she is careful to state that her legislative acts 
and standard requirements are applicable to 
what she distinctly and repeatedly calls "this 
Church." There is no question as to the 
kind of ordination she requires of those who 
are to "be accounted and taken to be a lawful 
Bishop, Priest and Deacon in this Church." 
The words "in this Church/' express no opin- 
ion whatsoever as to who are accounted lawful 
ministers by this Church, in so far as their 

260 



"THE CHURCH" AND "THIS CHURCH" 261 

ministry is to other communions of the Body 
of Christ. In the service for the ordering of 
Priests, the Bishop says, i ' Take thou authority 
to execute the office of a Priest in the Church of 
God." Authority is thereby given to the min- 
isters ordained by and in and for this Church 
to preach and administer the sacraments in any 
branch or communion of "the Church of God" 
where occasion may offer. 

The term "the Church' ' is of broader sig- 
nificance than the term "this Church.' ' "This 
Church" is but a part of "the Church" catho- 
lic. What then are the other parts? Those 
who make the distinguishing testing note and 
standard of measurement the apostolic succes- 
sion, would answer, the Church of England, of 
Rome, the Eastern Church, and other com- 
munions which hold to, and have come down 
through, the unbroken succession. Beyond this 
point questions arise. By some in this Church, 
other names are applied to Christians in fellow- 
ship with each other, who have not the ministry 
of succession as it is by some defined. It is 



262 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

claimed that, because this distinctive and es- 
sential note is lacking, they are not to be in- 
cluded as being of ''the Church.' ' 

This Church has, through her House of 
Bishops, declared to the contrary, and has pro- 
nounced it as her conviction that all who have 
been baptised into the name of the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost are to be accounted members 
of the Holy Catholic Church.* 

* See General Convention Journal 1886. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 

"r I iHE individual, ' ' says Albert Kocourek, 
JL Professor of Jurisprudence in North- 
western University, "is rapidly on the way to 
the loss of his identity. ' ' Society is becoming 
more and more highly organised. Thought to- 
day is everywhere testing itself out in confer- 
ence. It is seeking to combine with other 
thought. Action seeks to express itself in co- 
operation. Most of the world's work is being 
done in and through boards, committees and 
commissions, and in various other forms of 
corporate endeavour. The condition was not 
created by the Church. It is a sociological de- 
velopment. There is every reason to believe 
that the tendency is not transient but perma- 

263 



264 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

nent and progressive. In so far as this Church 
is possessed of wisdom, and considered to have 
right judgment, this wisdom and judgment will 
be sought by others who have, with us, a com- 
mon purpose and a common ideal in matters 
pertaining to the social welfare and to the 
extension of the Kingdom of God. Invita- 
tions and opportunities will come with in- 
creasing frequency to this Church to enter into 
conference and co-operative relation with 
others. 

The issue cannot be met by leaving the re- 
sponsibility to the individual. The Church, un- 
less she desires to become and to be considered 
archaic, must face the conditions under which 
life about her everywhere is seeking self-ex- 
pression. She must determine upon a policy, 
and come to a decision upon certain questions 
of principle. 

Now it is to be observed that the necessity 
for doing so does not arise from the demands 
of restless-minded individuals here and there in 
the Church, but rather from the conditions un- 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 265 

der which life about us everywhere is seeking 
to express itself in terms of efficiency. 

To say that we have gone all these years with- 
out a fixed policy, and have avoided bringing 
the question to an issue, is no reason, and offers 
no avenue of escape for avoiding a responsi- 
bility which rises up out of the evolution of the 
social order, and politely, but insistently, asks 
us, what we are going to do about it? The Apos- 
tles did not have Cathedral cars, but some of 
their successors have had the wisdom to adapt 
the Church's ministrations to modern condi- 
tions, and to use new material forces, as we are 
called to use the spiritual forces about us, to 
extend the kingdom of Christ. There are those 
in this Church who believe with a deep convic- 
tion that this Church is called to fulfill her di- 
vinely given mission by using these opportuni- 
ties, when presented, to help supply the great 
need for spiritualising and wisely directing this 
growing sense of corporate responsibility, and 
this ever-deepening consciousness of civic, na- 
tional, and international, as well as spiritual 



266 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

responsibility. This conviction is not born of dis- 
loyalty ; nor is it the effervescence of a wild or 
unbalanced enthusiasm. It is a conviction born 
of a love for the Church, and of a supreme con- 
fidence in her ability to hold her own, and jus- 
tify, in the realm of conference and co-oper- 
ative relationship, the worth of her balanced 
tenure of truth, faith and order. It is a con- 
viction spiritually related to a certain and sure 
sense of responsibility with reference to bap- 
tismal, confirmation and ordination vows, and 
to the vision and consciousness of power which 
come from bringing the soul in touch with 
Him in the sacrament of His Body and Blood, 
and to the consciousness born from listening 
to the call of Christ in the great Gospel of re- 
demption, read and preached in this Church. 

Those who do not feel and see and know the 
depth of this conviction, and the sense of re- 
sponsibility, which many priests and laymen in 
this Church are feeling to-day with reference 
to this subject, should reverently and seriously 
consider the consequences which must follow if, 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 267 

by legislation, this conviction, this conscious- 
ness of responsibility, this conscience, which has 
not grown without earnest prayer, is throttled, 
and this liberty denied. 

It must be admitted and remembered that 
these priests and laymen came into this Church 
through baptism and confirmation, and into 
her ministry through ordination, convinced, as 
they still are, that this liberty would not be 
questioned or denied. It should be recognised, 
also, that they have the same right to ask the 
assent of the Church to the expression of their 
views through this Church, as those of contrary 
opinion have to ask that they be not required 
to engage in such conference and co-operative 
relationship as is contrary to their convic- 
tion. 

It must be remembered that seminaries in this 
Church, ever held in honourable esteem, have 
never taught any theory of orders which would 
preclude such conference and co-operative re- 
lationship ; and that among the earliest bishops 
of this Church in America the right and duty 



268 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of such co-operation was held and expressed.* 

The issue is forced by those who deny the 
right, not by those who ask to be permitted to 
continue to exercise it. 

The question having been raised, it must of 
necessity be settled. That it was raised is due 
to the spirit of the age in which we live. To 
have avoided it would have been quite impos- 
sible. To evade it is also impossible. We 
should pray for a right judgment, asking for 
freedom from prejudice, and for the gift of 
patience, and of courtesy and humility, and do 
what seems to be our duty to Christ and His 
Church. 

We may make mistakes if we go ahead. We 
will surely make a mistake if we do not. The 
age calls us. We must face the call. 

First, it would seem that the right of free- 
conference, without co-operation, and without 
assessment for expense, should be granted to 
all organisations and commissions officially con- 
stituted in this Church. Their desire to use 

* See biographies of Bishop White and Bishop Moore. 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 269 

every opportunity to seek and know the truth, 
come whence it may, should be by permission 
accorded. The Church and the world are both 
wiser and better from the knowledge of truth 
revealed out of the conference which Christ 
held in the wilderness with the Devil, and surely 
this Church will never be called to confer with 
any whose position is more unchurchly than was 
Satan's. 

With reference to the question of co-opera- 
tion, there are more serious difficulties. They 
should be candidly faced, and thoughtfully and 
prayerfully considered. 

The sanction of the General Church could 
doubtless be secured without opposition, to the 
appointment of a commission to confer and co- 
operate in matters of civic and moral concern 
and upon questions of national and interna- 
tional peace and politics. To co-operate with 
men and ministers in these matters would in- 
volve no peril to any theory of orders. 

Permission could also be given, without con- 
troversy, to official boards and commissions to 



270 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

confer and co-operate with other men and min- 
isters relative to a national or international 
provision for extending to heathen lands the 
ministry of healing. Hospitals at home are 
built, supported and administered by Christian 
men of all communions without the question of 
orders being raised. Why the question should 
be injected into hospital extension in the mis- 
sion field is not apparent. Presbyterian and 
Episcopal castor oil and quinine are surely 
chemically the same. 

Permission could be further given for co- 
operation in erecting, maintaining and admin- 
istering colleges and universities in the foreign 
field. At home, Harvard, William and Mary, 
Yale, Columbia, and Princeton, all originally 
ecclesiastically controlled, have gradually be- 
come separate from denominational domination. 
Why cannot this Church permit co-operation 
with other men and ministers in this realm of 
practical endeavour without injecting the ques- 
tion of orders I It is not raised here at home ; 
why, of necessity, should it be forced into the 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 271 

question of co-operation in the far fields of 
missionary endeavour, especially when, as we 
are informed, Christian men and ministers man- 
age to get on better together out there than they 
do here at home? "The Shantung Christian 
University in China now stands for union in 
educational work. The English Baptists pro- 
vide the plants of the Medical, Normal and 
Theological Colleges; the Anglicans of Great 
Britain and the Congregationalists of the 
United States maintain representatives on the 
Faculty ; and Presbyterians are responsible for 
the plant and equipment of the Arts College.' ' 
The steps leading to the co-operation of the 
S. P. G. and the Presbyterian Board, together 
with the correspondence which passed between 
Bishop Montgomery, Secretary of the S. P. G., 
are reviewed by Dr. Arthur J. Brown in his 
recent book, "Unity and Missions."* The 
chapter entitled "High Church Anglicans and 
American Presbyterians in Shantung Univer- 

* "Unity and Missions," pp. 216-235, Arthur J. Brown. Flem- 
ming, H. Revell Co., N. Y. 



272 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

sity," is well worthy the careful study of all 
those who are interested in the question of 
Christian co-operation in educational work, and 
is of especial interest to those of the Episcopal 
Church who may be interested in this subject, 
in view of the fact that the terms of co-opera- 
tion were finally agreed upon without any sem- 
blance of compromise on the part of the English 
Church. The Presbyterian Board, in accept- 
ing the terms and conditions offered by the 
S. P. G., stated in their resolutions accepting 
the terms offered by Bishop Montgomery that 
" union in educational work and ecclesiastical 
uniformity are not synonymous." After six 
years of co-operation, the Secretary of the 
Presbyterian Board writes : 

* * The result has abundantly justified our faith both 
in the plan and in the missionaries who were to carry 
it into effect. The union has been in successful and 
happy operation ever since. If we cannot get together 
on all points, we are at least getting together on some ; 
and perhaps others will develop from them. 

"Enough has already been accomplished to prove 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 273 

conclusively that American Presbyterians, English 
Baptists and High Church Anglicans can harmoni- 
ously and effectively co-operate in educational work 
without any sacrifice of principle, where the men con- 
cerned have the mind of Christ. Each of these com- 
munions is carrying into the University 'its full dog- 
matic system, ' and the result is not discord but large 
and catholic concord." 

"The experience should be helpful elsewhere. The 
co-operation which we all desire will never spring full- 
orbed into being. A beginning must be made, small 
perhaps and very imperfect ; but when an opportunity 
opens to make that beginning, let us meet it with deep 
solemnity and a willingness to make any adjustment 
which does not involve conscious disloyalty to our 
Lord Jesus Christ. He who prayed with unutterable 
yearning that His disciples might 'be one' will 
surely help them in any effort to walk together in lov- 
ing service in His Holy Name. ' ' * 

Those in this Church, who advocate and urge 
co-operation with other communions not of our 
Church order, see no valid ground or reason 
why such co-operation should in any way in- 

* ' ' Unity and Missions, ' ' p. 235. 



274 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

volve the sacrifice of any principle relative to 
the faith and order of the Church. They feel 
with a deep sense of conviction that such co- 
operation would afford opportunity for vindi- 
cating the value of the heritage of the Church, 
and give practical manifestation of its inherent 
worth. 

There is current in this Church the conten- 
tion that to give formal and official consent to 
such conference and co-operative relationship 
would be to sacrifice an essential and funda- 
mental principle. To withhold such consent 
results in the sacrifice of principles which many 
regard as being far more vital and fundamen- 
tal. If the Church must make a sacrifice, she 
should be careful that she sacrifices the right 
thing. If she is compelled to set up a cross, 
and is called to suffer upon it, as she is com- 
pelled and called to do, she should take up her 
cross and follow Him who offered His Body 
upon Calvary that He might give His life to re- 
deem the world. The Body thus offered in 
sacrifice finds itself glorified in the great realms 



CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 275 

of spirit life. We must not shackle or crucify 
the spirit of Christ. 

The Church must remember that sins of omis- 
sion are as grave and serious as the sins of 
commission. It was the sin of omission which 
the Master condemned in the priest and Levite 
who, fearful of committing an offence against 
orthodoxy, and the integrity of the Jewish 
Church, passed by on the other side. It was 
the clanking of the delimiting chains of ecclesi- 
asticism which, also, led Him to ask the ortho- 
dox Church, standing shackled by tradition by 
the untilled vineyard, "Why stand ye here all 
the day idle ?" 

It would be perfectly possible and entirely 
practicable for this Church to disclaim, in a 
preamble, the intention of giving any interpre- 
tation as to her theory of the priestly orders 
of the Church, and then, without any compro- 
mise or sacrifice of conviction, resolve to per- 
mit and allow official conference and co-opera- 
tion within prescribed and definite limits, re- 
stricting, by express declaration, such co-opera- 



276 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

tion as would involve the delimitation of her 
field of endeavour and responsibility. 

This would combine the principle of liberty 
with the principle of conservation, and would 
be fair and considerate to all views and con- 
victions held and cherished in this Church. 

Others, whose opinions are worthy of con- 
sideration, would understand that no compro- 
mise of conviction was involved or implied in 
such Christian conference and co-operation as 
we have ventured to suggest. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 
MOVEMENTS TOWARD UNITY 

IT often happens that, while man is engaged 
in planning his own way for the entrance 
of God into human life, and standing expec- 
tant at the door through which he has decreed 
that Christ must enter, that suddenly, through 
unobserved methods of approach, the Lord ap- 
pears in His temple, and comes and stands in 
the midst of His people. His Spirit worketh 
where He listeth. In and through forces which 
man may despise and reject, He works to fulfill 
the divine purpose. In and along ways which 
human hands have not built, comes the Spirit 
of the eternal purpose. We decree that God 
must, almost of necessity, come according to 
the way of our planning, and lo! He comes 

277 



278 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

through means and forces which we have ac- 
counted futile and foolish. We build majestic 
highways for His approach, and lo ! " He comes 
in clouds descending. ' ' Because He came not 
as His ancient Church had expected and de- 
creed, they knew Him not when He came. Be- 
cause He used not their plan for revealing His 
messiahship, they despised and rejected Him. 
He stood in the midst of them, and they knew 
Him not. 

The Church of to-day would do well to remem- 
ber that it was pride of order and system, and 
the slavery to interpretation, that blinded the 
minds and hearts of a Church more ancient than 
our own, so that it did not see Him who came 
to fulfill their law and their prophets. 

With conscious humility of mind and with 
reverent purpose we may study the spiritual 
forces which are working in human life to-day 
and ask what their signs of promise are. 



MOVEMENTS TOWARD UNITY 279 

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF A NOBLE DISCONTENT 

There is an increasing evidence of a feeling 
of noble discontent with conditions which now 
exist. The economic waste which arises out of 
our unhappy divisions is making itself more 
widely and deeply felt. Men are asking if it 
is worth while to maintain and support rival 
organisations which compete for support in 
small communities, when the ancient reasons for 
their separate existence have been almost for- 
gotten, and when now they stand for practi- 
cally the same things. Men are to-day count- 
ing the spires which rise from hamlets all over 
the country-side ; they are counting the number 
of people who, on Sunday, pass through the 
rival church doors. They are taking account 
of the starvation wages that are paid to five 
parsons in towns of 1500 or 2000 people all over 
the land. They are asking, why should we con- 
tinue to do it? They are listening with one ear 
to the appeal for the support of these five hamlet 
parsons, and their five half-empty churches, 



280 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

and with the other, they are listening to the 
Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." 
They notice that it comes from lands where 
there are millions who are without the means 
of healing, and of education, and of the knowl- 
edge of Him who came to be the light of the 
world. They are listening with an ever-increas- 
ing consciousness of the burden and the privi- 
lege of responding to the numerous appeals 
which come out of the awakened social con- 
science, for war relief, for the support of edu- 
cation, united charity, settlement work, for the 
Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A., for emanci- 
pating the negro, and the child labourer, and the 
slaves to intemperance, and the slaves to ig- 
norance, and the slaves to social vice, and the 
slaves to many other forms of human bondage. 
Many men of benevolent disposition are to-day 
giving twenty-five and fifty per cent of their 
incomes in response to these and other vital 
appeals. They have the right to ask the com- 
parative worth of the appeal which comes to 
build or support another rival church, which 



MOVEMENTS TOWARD UNITY 281 

stands for nothing vitally distinctive as com- 
pared with the appeal from China, or the neigh- 
bourhood settlement house, or the great recon- 
structive work of social service and liberal, and 
at the same time religious, education. 

There are sure signs that the appeals of this 
kind are going to become more imperative and 
call for even more generous liberality. The 
oncoming demand for week-day instruction in 
religion, the plans which are now being thought 
out for giving graded instruction in the ele- 
ments of religion in connection with the system 
of public-school instruction, are destined to 
make stupendous demands upon the liberality 
of those who believe that this must be done to 
stem the growing tide of unbelief and the self- 
ishness, vice, and materialism which result 
from it. 

That men are discontented with social and 
religious conditions as they now exist is in- 
creasingly evident. Those responsible in the 
various Christian communities for planning 
their church policies for the future are in the 



282 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

presence of grave responsibilities. It is a crisis 
when much time needs to be spent in seeking 
through prayer to know what is God's will and 
purpose. If He calls us to Calvary, we must 
be willing, with a supreme faith, to go there 
and crucify our pride, and prejudice, "and 
whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union 
and concord.' ' We need, also, to beware what 
we label in these days as ' ' ungodly union. ' ' We 
need to ask, may it not be ungodly separation 
and disunion? 



THE FINDING OF THE AMERICAN LAYMAN 

The most significant discovery in the recent 
development of the Church has been the finding 
of the layman. He has found himself, and he 
has been discovered by the Church. In this dis- 
covery lies the hope and promise of a great 
spiritual democracy. The age of priestcraft has 
forever gone. The layman has come, and he 
has come to stay. With a new-born conscious- 
ness of personal responsibility, with a new-born 



MOVEMENTS TOWARD UNITY 283 

vision of his duty with reference to the mission 
of the Church, with a new-born realization of 
his own inherent priestly, prophetic, and kingly 
qualities as a son of God, and as a joint heir 
with Christ of the gifts of God, he stands to-day 
asking as never before, "Lord, what wilt thou 
have me do!" He thinks he is hearing the 
answer of his Lord in the cry of the world's 
need. He is convinced that the call to service 
and to co-operation is the call of the Father. 
He is offering himself for this service. He is 
saying, "Here am I. Send me." 

In connection with the student association 
work, and the missionary volunteer work, and 
the Laymen's Missionary Movement, and the 
federation of Churches, and social settlement 
work, and co-operative endeavour for religious 
education, and on charity organisation boards, 
and Y. M. C. A. directorates, and in countless 
other forms of united Christian service, the lay- 
men of our various and divided communions are 
coming to know and to respect each other. They 
are finding in one co mm on faith, in one com- 



284 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

mon Lord and Master, a practical basis and in- 
spiration for corporate service. They are ask- 
ing why they cannot engage in corporate com- 
munion in search for closer bonds of unity with 
Christ and with each other. 

There are other and far more significant 
movements looking to practical Christian co- 
operation which are welling up in the minds 
of thinking laymen, and they are talking to their 
ministers. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

OUR POSITION WITH REFERENCE TO 
THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH 

IS it the opinion of the Church of Rome, or 
the great Eastern Church which restrains 
us? Surely their opinion is worthy of respect. 
As far as the Eastern Church is concerned, is 
it not fair to ask if we might not teach that 
Church some very valuable lessons by acting 
ourselves in the light of a broader vision, and 
by placing our orders in more vital touch with 
the ignorance and social injustice and the great, 
human needs of the world in a way that would 
bring larger light and liberty and power to 
men? Would not the Eastern Church ultimately 
respect us more if we used our orders and our 
influence in a way to make them more largely 

285 



286 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

felt and more widely recognised and respected? 
Would not the fearless and forceful leadership 
which our Bishops might take in great con- 
ferences called to consider world problems tend 
to make the Bishops of the Eastern Church real- 
ise more fully the need for closer union with 
us in view of the great reconstructive work 
which the Church is called to do in helping the 
nations find their interdependence, and in lead- 
ing them to fulfill their destiny? Would not the 
manifestation of the power of " order,' ' in the 
midst of disorder, which might be shown in 
great, officially sanctioned efforts of co-opera- 
tion, tend to win the larger measure of respect, 
and help to create a compelling sense of need 
for closer fellowship between our leaders and 
the leaders of the Orthodox Eastern Church, if, 
instead of holding on to restraining fears and 
convictions as to the succession, they would ac- 
tually succeed in leading with their power of 
order the disordered forces of righteousness 
and the disunited but spiritually impowered 
communions in the army of Christ? 



THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH 287 

There can be no question but that the Ortho- 
dox Eastern Church is to-day enchained by 
formalism and despotism, and is in need of a 
great emancipation. Tied as she is to the state, 
she shares, if she does not contribute to create, 
the ignorance, the superstition, and the bigotry 
which so largely characterise the great nation 
where her dominance is supreme. Raising no 
potent voice against the persecution of the 
Jews; largely complacent in the presence of 
superstitions which she fosters and encourages, 
and allowing so many of her children all over 
the empire to remain in illiteracy, without vigor- 
ous protests to the government of which she is a 
part, she stands to-day in need of a great awak- 
ening, in the presence of an oncoming national 
crisis, and in the midst of a mighty people of 
latent genius, and of vast slumbering but now 
fast awakening potentialities. She would be 
stirred by the spectacle of great coherent and 
co-ordinated spiritual forces voicing to the pub- 
lic conscience, and through this conscience to the 
government, the great appeal for truth, and 



288 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

justice, and mercy, and national righteousness, 
and human brotherhood. 

Is the appeal of the cloister, of the study, of 
antiquity, as strong to-day for guarding a trust, 
as is the appeal which comes from the cry and 
the blood of the world to use that trust 1 Shall 
we battle for it, or battle with it? Shall we 
lose our life in seeking to save it, or save it in 
giving it even unto what men call death, in los- 
ing it in service! Can we not, in this crisis, 
trust the heart and mind of the Eastern Church 
to understand? 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

OUR POSITION WITH REFERENCE TO 
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 

ARE we being too largely restrained by our 
desire to win the confidence and respect of 
the Church of Rome! We are in full accord 
with those who desire this ultimate union. We 
believe, however, that there is good reason to 
question the wisdom of that method which asks 
that we withhold from conference, co-operation 
and fellowship with Protestant Communions 
for fear that we will be misunderstood by 
Rome. Will we not appear, it is asked, to place 
our orders on a parity with Protestant orders, 
and disorder generally, and thus seem to forfeit 
our own claim to a ministry preserved in un- 
broken historical continuity, and guarded and 

289 



290 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

validated by an unbroken succession! Perhaps 
so. But there are other considerations which 
are worthy of serious thought, which, if they 
be as potent as we believe them to be, would 
suggest an entirely different method of pro- 
cedure, with the view of attaining the same end 
which is aimed at by adopting the present 
method and policy of exclusiveness. 

The open and candid mind will ever recognise 
the many and great spiritual virtues displayed 
throughout the centuries in the character of 
many devout and earnest members of the great 
Eoman Communion. Her saints and heroes are 
a part of the heritage of our common Christian- 
ity, and are an inspiration to the cultivation of 
virtue and courage, and true saintliness of 
spirit. The organisation and administration 
of the Church of Rome has ever been charac- 
terised by a certain governmental genius, which, 
while it has not always been prosecuted with 
true and far-reaching statesmanship, has mani- 
fested, as no other organisation on earth has 
done, the masterful ability to control and dis- 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 291 

cipline great and diverse masses of people un- 
der a monarchical system. 

While it is clearly recognised that many in- 
dividual Romanists do not hold the views, and 
maintain the attitude of open defiance and an- 
tagonism to Protestant Christianity, to which 
we shall refer, yet it is evident from history, 
and is of current knowledge, that, as an or- 
ganisation speaking with official authority, and 
maintaining an official attitude, her position is 
one of radical antagonism and exclusiveness. 
In this discussion it is the official attitude of the 
Roman Church which we have in mind, and 
which is under consideration. 

The Church of Rome has ever been most 
deeply impressed, and as her history shows, has 
ever been most largely influenced by the con- 
sciousness, the dream, the hope, and the spec- 
tacle of power. She feels that she can, with 
calm complacency and satisfaction, view the 
spectacle of disordered and disjointed Protes- 
tantism. She glories in it. She points to it 
with self-conscious pride. She ridicules it. She 



292 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

classes this Church as a part of it. In matters 
where her interests are concerned, she speaks 
with one voice the demands of millions. Having 
spoken, she pauses to listen. She hears many 
contending voices of protest. They lack unity ; 
they lack force ; they lack convincing, sentiment- 
making, vote-making influence. She calmly sur- 
veys this Babel confusion of protest. She is 
self-satisfied. She speaks with louder tone, and, 
where she can do so, she speaks in more com- 
pelling accents. Where her authority is or has 
been supreme, she speaks, or spake, with im- 
perious demand. It is to her interest that the 
voice of protest should be a divided voice. It 
is to her interest that this disunion should be 
maintained and increased, or absorbed by her 
organisation. She doubtless listens with su- 
preme satisfaction to the terms which we apply 
in moments of controversial heat of mind and 
coldness of heart to our non-conformist breth- 
ren. She is doubtless well pleased, also, that 
we call each other by names which portray 
party spirit and inherent disunity in our letters 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 293 

to "Mr. Editor.' ' It is to the interest of 
worldly wise Rome that worldly unwise Protes- 
tantism should be kept as sectarian as possible. 
Some of her writers record the birth of a new 
sect with almost as much satisfaction as is felt in 
canonising a saint. The divisions of the forces of 
Protestantism strengthen the power of the Pope. 
A recent communication from the Vatican 
declares in terms which can but be commended 
for their perfect clearness of statement, Rome 's 
uncompromising position as to her basis of 
unity. " Unity resides in me," writes his holi- 
ness, the Pope, to the members of the Confer- 
ence on Faith and Order. Unquestionably a 
great power of unity does reside in him. So 
great is this unity, as it stands in contrast with 
the disunity of Christendom outside of him, 
that he, at present, feels that, while he may la- 
ment its existence outside of his organisation, 
he can afford to disregard it as a working force 
with which he must reckon. Disunion in Prot- 
estantism is so great that he neither fears nor 
respects it. 



294 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

Shall we seek our union with him upon his 
terms, or would it be better for us to seek, by- 
making ourselves felt in the united influence of 
ourselves with other communions outside his 
control, to make it expedient for him to change 
his terms from those of unconditional submis- 
sion to his authority, to some form of union 
without such unconditional submission? 

Eome has ever held to the doctrine of tem- 
poral power. To-day she holds this doctrine 
in abeyance. She holds it, however, in reserve 
for future use, and she holds the system and 
theory of her exclusive, divine right inviolate, 
in order that she may have the means of power 
when occasion offers for its exercise. As long 
as this seems, in the light of her past history, 
the most promising method for exercising her 
temporal power, she will, without compromise, 
and without yielding, remain unbending to any 
approach from others which does not recognise 
these claims and submit to them. This is made 
evident as being her present attitude in the 
letter recently received from the Vatican ad- 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 295 

dressed to the Conference on Faith and Order. 
There are, however, other and more vital 
ways of exercising spiritual powers over tem- 
poral affairs. Through united prayer, and by 
religious education wisely planned and directed ; 
by changing current customs and existing po- 
litical and industrial standards ; by enlightening 
the public conscience, and emancipating the will 
from the controlling desires and impulses which 
arise out of greed, covetousness and inordinate 
selfishness ; by proclaiming the truth that makes 
men free; and by the exercise of a spiritual 
influence that shall bring men and nations to 
see the vision, and to seek communion with Him 
in Whom is the abundance of life, and who is 
Himself the source and power of all human 
liberty; the Church may exert, through cor- 
porate spiritual endeavour, an influence over the 
powers which rule in high places and low that 
would be transforming, and far more perma- 
nent and vital than could ever come from domi- 
nating the will by the voice of an external au- 
thority. The authority of Christ is supreme, 



296 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

but it is distinctive from every other form of 
authority in that it is inherent in His Body 
through His Spirit, and speaks from within to 
the conscience of man, and through the whole 
Body, as well as through a constituted ministry, 
to the conscience of rulers and to the life of 
nations. 

"When Christ shall have become supremely 
regnant in the consciousness of His Body and 
in the conscience of the race, the will of God 
will be done upon earth as it is in heaven. This 
end cannot be attained, and it is doubtful if it 
can be largely furthered, by the voice of ex- 
ternal authority decreeing dogmas, and impos- 
ing laws with the claim of an infallible divine 
right ; or, on the other hand, by the passage of 
sumptuary laws which endeavour to reconstruct 
society by an authority imposed from without. 
Neither the external voice of an exalted dig- 
nitary in the Church, nor the voice of external 
law, neither the Pope, nor Protestantism, mili- 
tant and aggressive in and through legislative 
enactments, can bring into human consciousness, 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 297 

and place over the conscience of men or of na- 
tions, the reign of the Kingdom of God. Such 
voices and influences may help change the out- 
ward environment of life, but life itself must be 
built up by response to the inner voice of God, 
and the submission of the will to the direction 
and control of the Spirit of Christ incarnate 
and remnant in his Body, the Church. 

If the Conference on Faith and Order should 
feel convinced that its largest hope lies in main- 
taining a distinctly, and somewhat exclusive con- 
ciliatory attitude toward the Orthodox Eastern 
Church, and the Church of Rome, it might then 
be well, during the centuries which seem des- 
tined to intervene while the Conference is pro- 
ceeding on this basis, and with this most desir- 
able end in view, to organise a Conference and 
Co-operation of Faith and Disorder, in order 
to help solve the grave and pressing problems 
which face us now, and which cannot, without 
disaster, abide long academic considerations of 
questions of order and administration. 

With full and cordial recognition of the need 



298 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

for ultimate organic unity, under a generally 
accepted order, which will unify the expressions 
of faith, and preserve and bear witness to the 
truth committed to the Church, it may still be 
maintained and urged that conference and co- 
operation among those who hold the funda- 
mental and vital elements of faith essential to 
salvation, could be undertaken with a view of 
bringing to bear upon the stupendous problems 
which face us in this world crisis the practical 
unity of the forces and convictions which inhere 
in the various communions of Protestant Chris- 
tianity, to the end that, with one mind and one 
heart, we might make the mind and will of 
Christ regnant in the thought of the nations 
and in the councils of the world. 

There are many in the Church who feel pro- 
foundly convinced that such corporate union 
of spiritual forces, now weakened through dis- 
union, would be capable of facing the social, in- 
dustrial and international problems which arise 
out of past neglect, and out of the present world 
crisis, with a power and influence which cannot 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 299 

be exerted by any one communion, or by them 
all speaking independently of eacb other. The 
ideals of Jesus Christ are capable of realisation 
in and through the united Church alone. While 
the ultimate aim should be organic unity, the 
present necessity calls for every possible meas- 
ure of unity of spirit that can be expressed 
through practical co-operation as a result of 
fraternal conference and federated purpose. 
Can we not, therefore, co-ordinate and unify 
the will to serve? 

The result of such well-considered and wisely 
directed corporate Christian influence would be 
sure to make an impression upon the conscious- 
ness of the Church of Rome. Rome has ever 
sought to have her name regarded as the syn- 
onym of power. There was a time when this 
desire was fulfilled in larger measure than it is 
to-day. She still fondly cherishes her ancient 
ambitions. Her position to-day is one of wait- 
ing watchfulness. She waits the return to her 
dominion of those who, in their desire for unity, 
will submit to her claims and domination. The 



300 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

practical question to be considered is: as to 
what influences and conditions will lead Rome 
to reconsider her position and recast her claims, 
and so alter her terms of unity as to make them 
at least possible for intelligent and hopeful con- 
sideration. 

The Church of Rome is seen at its best in 
those countries where she is in competition with, 
and restrained by the presence and influence of 
Protestant Christianity. The strengthening 
of Protestant influence by co-operative en- 
deavour would undoubtedly tend to help the 
Roman Church to break the bonds by which her 
life is enchained, and make her a more vital and 
tolerant, as well as a more distinctly spiritual 
force than she is to-day. It would perhaps lead 
her to compare more closely the decrees of the 
Council of Trent with the decrees of the first 
Apostolic Council of Jerusalem. 

When Rome shall come to hear a voice as 
loud and as far-reaching as her own ; when she 
sees that the forces of non-conformity to her 
rule and order, which now, by reason of their 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 301 

disunion and incoherence, she regards with in- 
difference, have come to a practical unity of 
agreement and are co-operating in their influ- 
ence upon temporal powers with an influence 
as great as, or greater than her own, Rome will 
then begin to respect and desire the forces 
which, in their disunion, fail to hinder her su- 
preme influence. The respect which Rome has 
ever had for power ; the agelong consciousness 
of a dream, largely at one time, but never com- 
pletely fulfilled, but still fondly cherished, would 
lead her to ask herself some very searching 
questions if she saw in America the actual com- 
ing together into practical and potent confer- 
ence and federation of the forces of non-con- 
formity. The Protestant Episcopal Church is, 
from her viewpoint, included among these 
forces. She is regarded as being, with the rest 
of the Anglican Communion, largely responsible 
for Christian schism and dissent. To be re- 
garded by Rome as schismatic, and by non-con- 
formity as exclusive and self-centred, would 
seem to preclude the possibility of our assuming 



302 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

corporate leadership anywhere until we can 
manage to get into a working agreement with 
some part of the unhappily divided Christian 
world. Protestants, at least, will work with us if 
we will let them. At times, with a humility which 
certainly is not born of any recognition of our 
numerical strength, they have shown a dispo- 
sition to welcome us to leadership. The ca- 
pacity of the Episcopal Church for organisa- 
tion and for coherent endeavour has made its 
impress upon other communions, and the im- 
pression would unquestionably be deepened, and 
the disposition to consider episcopacy as essen- 
tial to the most efficient administration would 
be increased if we should, with our ordered sys- 
tem, enter into fellowship and co-operation with 
them in the effort to help solve the problems 
which arise out of economic, political, ecclesi- 
astical and international disorder. 

Rome would then take more thoughtful notice 
of us. She has ever been quick to measure 
forces. She knows when to be defiant, and when 
to be conciliatory. Under present conditions, 



THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 303 

Rome knows that she is more dominant than any 
one other ecclesiastical power. 

The plea and appeal here made for a federa- 
tion, a co-operation, among the forces in Chris- 
tianity to which Rome is antagonistic, is in no 
sense made out of any feeling of enmity to 
Rome. It is not with the idea of oppressing her 
but of impressing her that we feel the value of 
the suggestion that, for a practical constructive 
programme, we should get into closer relation- 
ship with the non-conforming Christian Com- 
munions. 

We can well understand that it would be to 
the interest of the Church of Rome that the 
Episcopal Church in America, and the Anglican 
Church all over the world, should be kept as 
a buffer between her and radical Protestantism. 

Having so long failed to lead Rome to make 
any concession to our position, or to recognise 
in any way either our orders or our sacraments, 
might it not be well, at least, to get on speaking 
terms, and, if possible, into closer fellowship, 
and, as far as is practicable, into co-operative 



304 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

agreement with those communions in the Church 
of God who do not dispute the perfect regu- 
larity of our orders, who recognise the validity 
of our sacraments, and who are, even now, fully 
united with us in the confession of a common 
faith as it is expressed in the Apostles' creed? 



CHAPTER XL 

CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATION 
WITH PROTESTANT COMMUNIONS 

THE plan and hope for organic Church unity 
must include Eastern, Roman and Protes- 
tant Christianity, and all other communions in 
the Church of God. At present, and doubtless 
for a long time to come, the organic unity of 
this church with all the Protestant Communions 
existing to-day in non-conformity to her order 
and worship, is neither possible, nor is it imme- 
diately desirable. This Church would be com- 
pletely swamped, and her distinctive ideals 
would be almost, if not entirely, effaced in the 
event that the most radical non-conformists, 
for example, should accept the quadrilateral 
proposal, and come into organic unity with this 

305 



306 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

Church. Their view-point, their methods, their 
attitude, would by overwhelming majorities 
control in the councils of this Church. Their 
Bishops, in council, would far outnumber our 
own. That radical and progressive views are 
needed and perform a valuable function in 
Christian enterprise, is unquestionably true ; but 
that these views should be made overwhelm- 
ingly dominant in the councils and legislation of 
a united Church is a question of more doubtful 
expediency. Some branches of non-conformity 
would tend to contribute a balancing element 
of conservatism. At present, however, it would 
seem that, with views, methods, and policies so 
radically divergent, it would be better that de- 
nominational independence and responsibility 
should, during a process of education and de- 
velopment, continue to exist. Gradually, those 
whose views and methods accord, will doubtless 
affiliate and unite, which will lessen the problem 
of ultimate unity by delimiting the scope of 
radical differences. 
In the meanwhile, conference and co-opera- 



PROTESTANT COMMUNIONS 307 

tion upon matters of common concern, and with- 
in limits agreed upon, would tend to create 
mutual understanding, and mutual sympathy. 
It would also give practical coherence and soli- 
darity to the forces of righteousness having 
their roots in a common spiritual faith. And it 
would enable the separate communions to main- 
tain their conservative or radical viewpoints 
without the compromise of organic dignity, 
principle, or conviction, which each would con- 
tinue to reserve the right to maintain and as- 
sert. 

At the present time, by reason of its exclusive 
position, the Episcopal Church neither knows 
nor understands those to whom she has made 
her quadrilateral offer. If they should accept 
it, she would be suddenly brought into organic 
relationship with great communions without 
having previously created any basis of mutual 
understanding and sympathy. 

If assent were given for conference and co- 
operation, it would afford the opportunity for 
creating an atmosphere of sympathy and form- 



308 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ing a basis of understanding. It would also 
make it possible for the Christian conscience to 
voice itself, and for spiritual conviction to ex- 
press itself in matters of public concern, and 
upon questions of national and international 
moral and spiritual reconstruction, without the 
sacrifice of any distinctive principles whatso- 
ever. 

But, it is asked, shall we sacrifice our orders! 
In what way should we sacrifice them? If 
offered upon the altar of world service, they 
would be glorified. If thrown into the midst of 
disorder and chaos with the hope of recon- 
structing the shattered ideals and institutions 
which are tumbling down all over the world, the 
sacrifice would not be a loss but a gain. If, by 
sacrificing our orders, is meant abandoning 
them, then it may be answered that no imme- 
diate or impending crisis suggests any reason 
why this should be for a moment considered. 

We are convinced, both from observation and 
experience, that our orders and our ordered 
Church are never more largely appreciated than 



PROTESTANT COMMUNIONS 309 

when this Church and her ministry enter into 
cordial and sympathetic conference and co-op- 
erative relationship with other Christian com- 
munions. It often happens that the best way to 
fight for the triumph of our convictions is to 
fight fearlessly and triumphantly with them. 
The supreme excellence of a well-tempered an- 
cient blade may be shown by taking it into the 
thick of a hard-fought fight; or it may be de- 
scribed and held up as worthy of high regard 
in the description given of it in the cata- 
logue of an ancient armoury. When the 
great fight for liberty and truth is on in the 
world, men would rather choose to test the value 
of the ancient sword by putting it into action. 
Rome has two swords. Protestantism has one. 
But this one is badly broken. Shall we fight 
each other with the fragments, or weld them 
together, and, united in hope and purpose and 
high resolve, follow our acknowledged Leader 
into the thick of the fight where * i He goes forth 
to war"? How the army shall ultimately be 
officered may best be determined when it is fully 



310 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

mobilised. The chances are that the common 
sense which will be born out of experience will 
show the need for a generally accepted order. 
This will be the opportunity of this Church to 
make her contribution. The need for what she 
has to contribute to create and preserve cor- 
porate unity will then be seen and felt. In times 
of war, the nation instinctively looks to West 
Point. It is for us to show our capacity for 
leadership. This capacity is shown most con- 
vincingly in a self -forgetful willingness to serve 
anywhere, and to serve with any who, with us, 
are willing to follow in His train Who came not 
to be ministered into but to minister, and Who 
was among us as one Who was the greatest 
Master because He was the humblest and most 
self-sacrificing servant. 



CHAPTER XLI 

THE RECOGNITION OF THE LAYMAN 
BY THIS CHURCH 

IN the baptismal office, the Episcopal Church 
signs and seals those who come to this holy 
sacrament with the tokens of their inheritance 
as the children of God, and the heirs of the 
Kingdom of Christ, into whose Body they are 
then, as living members, incorporated. The 
Church declares that, in view of this vital and 
spiritual union with the great Head of the 
Church, each member of His Body is expected 
to continually receive and express the life and 
power of the risen Christ. It becomes the duty 
and privilege of each member of His Body to 
aid in extending the Kingdom of God. This is 
the mission of the Church. The baptismal 

311 



312 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

service is thus the foundation charter of the 
great spiritual democracy which the Church is 
called of God to establish in the earth. 

From this basis proceeds the conception of 
the Church with regard to the duties and birth- 
right obligation and privileges of the laity in 
the government and work of the Church. Bishop 
Vail, in his chapter on the government of the 
Church, has very clearly stated this fundamen- 
tal fact with reference to position of the laity. 
"The government of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States," he writes, "is 
strictly and purely democratical ; that is to say, 
every member of the Church, without any ex- 
ception in any class, has an equal right in the 
making of every one of its laws, and in appoint- 
ing the method and means of their administra- 
tion. Or, to express the same idea in another 
form, there is not a single exercise of authority 
in this Church which may not be directly in- 
fluenced by every member of it. The supreme 
power of governing this Church is the will of 
the majority of the whole Church, which is com- 



RECOGNITION OP THE LAYMAN 313 

posed of Bishops, Clergy and laity; so that 
Bishops cannot govern alone, nor the Clergy 
alone, nor the laity alone. But all these three, 
as equally belonging to the Church, and inter- 
ested in it, act together, and thus, in the highest 
and justest style of popular and universal suf- 
frage, the certainly ascertained will of the actual 
majority of the whole Church is the supreme 
law of the Church. 

"The government of this Church is also 
representative; that is to say, its laws are all 
made by bodies composed of representatives 
elected by the whole Church. ' ' 

The place and power of the laity in this 
Church is scarcely realised by the laity them- 
selves. They, perhaps, do not pause to con- 
sider the far-reaching extent of their inherent 
responsibilities. It is to be feared that, while 
many of the priests of the Church seem at times 
to take themselves too seriously, the laymen of 
the Church do not take themselves seriously 
enough. The nature and scope of lay obliga- 
tion and influence are evident when the follow- 



314 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ing constitutional provisions of this Church, are 
seen and realised. 

The congregation elects the parish vestry. 
The vestry calls the rector, and administers 
the temporal affairs of the parish. It, however, 
does much more than this. The vestry deter- 
mines and certifies as to the fitness of every 
candidate for Holy Orders seeking to go from 
the parish into the priesthood. No man can 
enter the ministry of this Church until his fit- 
ness has been duly considered by the vestry 
assembled, and until a majority of their whole 
number shall have signed their assent and tes- 
timonial to the fact that they consider him 
morally, mentally and otherwise fitted to enter 
upon preparation for the sacred office. 

Then, too, the vestry elects delegates to the 
council which is the governing legislative body 
of the diocese. No measure can be passed in 
the council which is disapproved by the laity. 
A vote by orders may at any point be demanded. 
All executive officers, including the Bishop and 
the Standing Committee, are elected by a con- 



RECOGNITION OF THE LAYMAN 315 

current vote of the clergy and laity, and the 
consent of a majority of both orders is required 
to secure an election. 

The Diocesan Council thus constituted elects 
the Standing Committee, which is composed of 
an equal number of clergymen and laymen. The 
Standing Committee thus constituted is called 
to give final consent to the ordination of can- 
didates for Holy Orders, so that twice the ap- 
plicant for ordination has to pass the scrutiny 
of the laity, and secure their assent. The 
Standing Committee also has to give, or refuse, 
consent to the consecration of Bishops, so that 
no man can be elevated to this office unless 
approved either by the vote of the General 
Convention assembled, or by the majority 
vote of all the Standing Committees of the 
Church. 

The Diocesan Convention, through a vote by 
orders, elects four clerical and four lay deputies 
to the triennial General Convention of the 
Church. In that body three separate, and yet 
concurrent votes, may be demanded, and a ma- 



316 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

jority in each order required to secure the adop- 
tion of any propositions, or the passage of any 
vital measure. The House of Bishops sits apart 
and votes in its own order. The House of Depu- 
ties, composed of four clerical and four lay 
delegates from each diocese and missionary 
jurisdiction, sits as one body. But upon de- 
mand, any vote upon a vital proposition may 
be required to be taken by orders, giving power 
to the laity to prevent the passage of any meas- 
ure which, by them, is disapproved, even though 
it has received the assent of a majority vote 
in the House of Bishops, and the assent of a 
majority vote of the clerical order in the House 
of Deputies. Any constitutional change or 
Prayer Book alteration has to be voted on by 
orders, and then referred back for consideration 
to the Diocesan Councils, and thus comes back 
directly to the congregations, who, through their 
vestries, elect the delegates to the Council. 
Thus the laity are impowered with fundamental 
and grave responsibilities in this Church, which, 
by reason of these constitutional provisions, is 



RECOGNITION OF THE LAYMAN 317 

essentially democratic in the form and spirit of 
her government and administration. 

It is, however, significant that the call which 
has aroused the laity of this Church to the large 
measure of their sense of responsibility for 
helping to fulfill the mission of the Church, as 
recently manifested, is a call which has come to 
them, in large measure, from outside this 
Church. 

The clear, definite call to world evangeliza- 
tion ; the practical and potent appeal of the Lay- 
men's Missionary Organisation, voiced through 
conventions held all over America, and ex- 
pressed through the every member canvass 
idea, which originated in this organisation, 
has aroused and enlisted the co-operation of the 
laity of this Church to an extent which we 
should gladly recognise and accord to the spirit 
and desire of these co-operative endeavours to 
extend the Kingdom of Christ. The Church 
trained the spirit in the laity which makes the 
response, and by her spiritual ministration, 
trained the will to respond. The call, however, 



318 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

which is to-day inspiring thousands of laymen 
in this Church to make response is the call of 
Christ through agencies originating outside her 
fold. 

That there are agencies, such as the Sunday 
School Movement, the Y. M. C. A. and the 
Brotherhood of St. Andrew, which were born 
in the consecrated thought of her own sons, and 
which have been heard and answered by men of 
every Christian communion, shows how inter- 
related and interdependent we are in the great 
Household of God, " which is the blessed com- 
pany of all faithful people.' ' 

The time has surely come when it behooves 
the bishops and pastors of the Church to face 
the facts as they exist, with an open and candid 
mind, and to take inventory of the forces and in- 
spirational impulses which are to-day appealing 
to the laymen of this Church, and which will 
appeal with more impelling power in the years 
which lie immediately ahead, and to ask what 
is the wisest policy to pursue in order to con- 
serve and keep in touch with these forces which 



RECOGNITION OF THE LAYMAN 319 

are now so potently at work in the heart and 
conscience and will of so many of her members. 
In determining what this policy shall be, the 
laity have, in this Church, a voice and influence 
which, if it should make itself felt in legislation, 
as it does in co-operative endeavour, would tend 
very largely to decide what should be the policy 
and attitude of this Church with reference to 
these great world movements, and spiritual 
awakenings which are going on about us, and 
which will go on without us, but which are 
calling to us to help, with a pathos and power 
of appeal which sounds to very many of us as 
though it were the voice of the Son of God and 
Saviour of mankind speaking to us through the 
baptised membership of His Body. 



CHAPTER XLII 

THE WAY PREPARED FOR THIS 
CHURCH 

THIS Church stands to-day before a wide- 
open door of opportunity. She has much 
to give. Her inheritance from the past is a 
possession needed to enrich and impower the 
Church of the future. The creed she says is 
being increasingly said by other communions. 
The prayers of her liturgy are being more fre- 
quently learned and woven into the public 
prayers of non-conformist ministers. Recently 
her prayer for missions has been printed and 
used in unison by the thousand and more men 
and women convened in two great Laymen's 
Missionary Conventions. The Christian Year 
is winning constantly increasing favour. The 

320 



THE WAY PREPARED FOR THIS CHURCH 321 

great festivals which we keep are being widely 
observed in other communions. Advent and 
Lenten services are publicly announced, and 
appropriate penitential devotions are made in 
many Churches not of our communion. Vested 
choirs and vested ministers are no longer dis- 
tinctly characteristic of any one body in the 
Church of Christ. Ancient prejudices against 
our form and ceremonial worship are passing 
away. The prejudice against prelacy is deep 
rooted, and is perhaps more vital than ever in 
view of the growing consciousness of democ- 
racy, and in view of the conviction, which the 
world crisis has accentuated, that the claim of 
a divine right to rule must seek and vindicate 
its exclusive claim on some other ground than 
hereditary descent. The value of continuity 
of order, and the conserving and pragmatic 
value of the executive and administrative epis- 
copal form of government, are, by many, com- 
ing to be frankly acknowledged, and sincerely 
desired. 
What is now needed is the creation of an 



322 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

atmosphere of sympathetic understanding. The 
scribes and Pharisees who, in this hour so preg- 
nant with the hope and desire for unity, use 
the language of bitterness, and of animosity, 
and cast terms of caustic speech into the faces 
of other members of the Body of Christ to burn 
them like vitriol, are the enemies of the spirit 
and the hope of unity in this day of the open 
door of opportunity. Such language proceeds 
from the prejudice-blinded mind of the ecclesi- 
astic and not from the hearts of men inspired 
by the Spirit of Christ. 

On the other hand, every approach which 
tends to conciliate the spirit of misunderstand- 
ing, and to break down the barriers of preju- 
dice, should be, by this Church, welcomed and 
encouraged. If she comes bearing in one hand 
her ancient treasures, and in the other a drawn 
sword, her approach will scarcely meet with a 
glad response and a cordial welcome. If she 
comes with princely pomp and arrogant spirit 
and stands armed for defence at the open door, 
it is apt to be closed in her face. If she comes 



THE WAY PREPARED FOR THIS CHURCH 323 

as one girt about the waist with a towel, anxious 
and ready to serve, she will be welcomed at 
the open door by other servants of the Son of 
God, Who humbled Himself and made Himself 
of no reputation that through humility and love 
He might conquer and win the hearts of men. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

THE WORLD, THE WORK, THE WASTE, 
CO-WORKERS 

THE laymen are beginning to think of the 
mission of the Church in terms commen- 
surate with its dignity. They are coming to 
realise that the mission is too great for any one 
communion, and that useless waste results from 
a lack of unity of plan and purpose. Why, it 
is asked, does not the great Christian Church 
get together and plan a programme 1 The time 
is near at hand when this will be done. The 
Episcopal Church must decide as to what shall 
be her official relation to the world programme. 
Many of her wealthiest and most influential 
laymen will have no hesitancy in deciding what 
their attitude will be. That many of them will 

324 



WORLD, WORK, WASTE, CO-WORKERS 325 

co-operate with munificent gifts, commensurate 
with the magnitude of the endeavour, may be 
reasonably expected and confidently assumed. 

If representatives of missionary organisa- 
tions at home and abroad should come into con- 
ference and take up first a plan and programme 
for providing hospitals for the mission fields 
of the world, the task would challenge the faith 
of the world. A survey could be made by ex- 
perts to ascertain just where great Christian 
hospital centres could be located in China, Ja- 
pan, India and other non-Christian countries. 
A programme could be planned extending over 
from three to five years. It could be based upon 
the expectation of securing for this purpose 
perhaps two or more million dollars a year. 
The sum needed might demand five million a 
year. With the Christian world committed to 
the plan, the sum would not be impossible. This 
appeal, addressed to men of large means, would 
come to them in terms in which they have been 
accustomed to think. It would impress them as 
an economic and businesslike proposition, and 



326 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

would make a splendid demand upon their sym- 
pathy and their faith. It would assure them 
that what they were giving to help heal the 
nations would not be spent in rival and re- 
duplicated institutions. "With ten million dol- 
lars there could be built one hundred hospitals, 
or fifty with endowment sufficient to provide 
for them. Men of all communions would rally 
to the support of such a programme as they 
have rallied to the appeals of the International 
Committee of the Y. M. C. A. 

The same kind of programme might be, and 
doubtless will be (it surely should be), worked 
out with a view to provide a certain number of 
national Christian colleges and universities for 
non-Christian countries. Again, as a result of 
an international survey, and a concerted en- 
deavour, a programme extending over from 
three to five years could be planned and the ap- 
peal made on the basis of a supply for a world 
need. It would be in terms of millions. The 
task of raising it could be, and doubtless would 
be, divided among Christian nations, among 



WORLD, WORK, WASTE, CO-WORKERS 327 

the states of America, and among the cities of 
these states, and among the various co-operat- 
ing communions. The appeal, like that for a 
hospital programme, would have something 
winsome and inspiring about it that would 
startle the thought of men and rouse their in- 
terest. The element of Christian solidarity, of 
broad vision, of economic and practical effi- 
ciency would commend it to men whose response 
would be in terms of a certain per cent of the 
sum needed and asked for. 

From these hospitals would go native nurses 
and native doctors to extend the ministry of 
healing. With such national, or better inter- 
national, leadership, the non- Christian national 
governments would doubtless in many instances 
co-operate. 

From these great Christian universities would 
go trained teachers, many of whom would be 
Christians, to spread the truth that makes men 
free, and do their share to create the lasting 
bonds of international brotherhood. 

In the non-Christian lands, the guarantee 



328 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

could at least be given and kept that the insti- 
tutions should at least be kept permanently 
Christian in tone and teaching, which is more 
than can be said of many of the universities of 
America. 

Around the institutions could be grouped the 
theological seminaries designed to train the 
native ministry of the native Church, and each 
communion could see to it that the integrity of 
its position was maintained without compro- 
mise. 

Perhaps this is as far as a wisely and well- 
directed programme of co-operative endeavour 
would think of going at present. To suggest 
the delimitation of the field of evangelistic work 
and administrative responsibility would doubt- 
less meet with serious opposition. For the 
sake of engaging the co-operation of all who 
might be led to co-operate in the hospital and 
educational programme, the question of de- 
limiting the field of evangelistic responsibility 
should not be urged or insisted upon. This is 
a problem in itself, and could best be left to 



WORLD, WORK, WASTE, CO-WORKERS 329 

another day and to other men. The years that 
are coming will have new light and new wisdom 
to contribute to its solution. 

It is certainly not well to carry our divisions 
into the mission field in matters where there is 
co-operation already at home, as is the case in 
community and state hospitals and great state 
and national universities. 

In these new movements toward practical 
unity, in this great united international mission 
programme, the layman aroused, conscious of 
mission, trained to think in terms of efficiency, 
and along lines of corporate endeavour, will 
have a determining influence in shaping the 
policy of the Christian Church in the years 
which lie ahead of us. The laymen may indeed 
demand that the delimiting chains of ecclesi- 
asticism be broken that in and through this 
Church they may be given freedom to serve for 
the larger extension of the Kingdom of Christ. 

This Church of ours may, if it will, continue 
to withhold its official sanction to such limited 
co-operation as has been suggested. She will 



330 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

not, however, prevent it. She cannot. Nor can 
she prevent her laymen from making, as many 
of them unquestionably will, generous and mu- 
nificent contributions to the appeal which the 
programme will make. 

The writer feels convinced that the pro- 
gramme and the appeal, in some such form, will 
confront the Christian Church, in America at 
least, in the not far-distant future. There are 
those who may .not desire it. This Church can- 
not prevent it, even if she would, by either si- 
lence or the refusal to give to the endeavour her 
official sanction. 

That this Church should refuse to consent to 
such limited and clearly defined co-operation 
.would seem almost unthinkable. That she should 
authorise her official Board of Missions to so 
confer and co-operate would be, in the judgment 
of many, the part of far-sighted wisdom. If 
serious objection should be made to this, then 
the Church should be willing to authorise the 
Board of Missions to appoint representatives 
to engage in such conferences and co-operation, 



WORLD, WORK, WASTE, CO-WORKERS 331 

appointing those who would welcome the op- 
portunity of doing so. In the presence of the 
vision of so great an opportunity for this 
Church to make her influence and leadership 
felt, one feels humiliated by the thought of the 
possibility that the Church might dare to refuse. 
For her to do so would make it impossible for 
her to share in the credit and glory of the enter- 
prise to which the contributions which would be 
made by her broad-visioned laymen would en- 
title her. It would also preclude the possibility 
of her exerting her influence in the administra- 
tion and control of the institutions founded un- 
der this programme. And it would be a con- 
cession to the theories of those in the Church 
whose opposition would be largely founded upon 
interpretations of the ministerial orders which 
the Church has never officially sanctioned, and 
which she should not be expected to sanction, 
in this exclusive sense, in this indirect way. 

The time has come when questions of theory 
and interpretation, concerning which scholars 
and priests stand hopelessly divided, should not 



332 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

be allowed to clog the wheels of progress, or 
be forced as issues and hindrances into the prac- 
tical work of the Church. They are questions 
with which the laity are not primarily and 
vitally concerned, and this Church should find 
some way, and find it as soon as possible, by 
which those who are untrammelled by unau- 
thorised exclusive interpretations may, with her 
sanction and blessing, respond to what they 
very earnestly believe to be the clear call of 
Christ to their conscience and to His Church. 



CHAPTER XLIV 
THE RESTRAINT OF POWER 

THE token and sign of true greatness of 
spirit and power is never so clearly evi- 
dent as it is in its restraint. This is the marvel 
and the wonder of the life and power of God. 
There are forces in nature which, if unbound, 
would in a moment annihilate the universe. The 
world exists by the marvel of the providence 
which restrains created force. The vast pa- 
tience of God is manifested in the restraint of 
justice by the power of mercy. The masterful 
majesty of Christ was shown when, with the 
power to summon to His aid ' ' twelve legions of 
angels," He suffered Himself to be betrayed 
by a kiss, and to be led to judgment and to 
crucifixion by the unrestrained malice and fury 

333 



334 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

of the mob. That the devil and his angels are 
not self-restrained, is proof of the limitation, 
and prophetic of the ultimate overthrow of 
their power. 

Those who hold, by reason of their majority, 
the power to impose their will upon the whole 
Church, will, if they be imbued with the restrain- 
ing presence of the all-powerful Spirit of God, 
refrain from seeking to crush the liberties of 
those who are at their mercy. 

The majority may rightly insist upon their 
liberty to act in conformity with their convic- 
tions ; they may not, without tyranny, demand 
that others of contrary conviction be com- 
pelled to act with them. 

If, for example, in the case of the Panama 
Conference, the Bishop of the missionary juris- 
diction of Panama, or a missionary Bishop of 
Porto Eico or Mexico had been ordered to at- 
tend this convention, either by the Board of 
Missions, or by the General Convention, it 
would have been a tyranny of the majority. If 
the President of the Board, or any member of 



THE RESTRAINT OF POWER 335 

it, had been ordered to go as a delegate, it would 
have been an act of tyranny. If, in view of a 
protest, funds contributed by the General 
Church, where divergent views obtain, had been 
voted to defray the expenses of a conference 
opposed by a minority, this too would have 
shown the lack of restraint of power. 

None of these things was done. That those 
should have been delegated to go who would 
choose to accept, and make use of their creden- 
tials, was not in any way an act of oppression ; 
nor did it show a disregard for the views of 
others. The right of the minority to express 
their views, and to act in accordance with them, 
was freely accorded on the one hand, and fully 
exercised on the other. 

For the minority to have insisted that a rep- 
resentative missionary organisation did not 
have the right to send those who were willing to 
go to a conference where the facts and condi- 
tions of half a continent were to be reviewed 
and considered, seems a contention which could 
not be assented to without a forfeiture of what 



336 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

would seem to be a reasonable responsibility; 
and in view of the fact that the Church has ac- 
credited bishops and other missionaries work- 
ing in this field which was to be placed under re- 
view, it would seem that the Board would have 
declined to meet a definite missionary obligation 
had it refused to send those, who were perfectly 
willing to go, to learn more of the facts and con- 
ditions upon which, of necessity, an intelligent 
missionary policy must be based and prose- 
cuted. That the money contributed by the mi- 
nority was not voted to defray the expense of 
this mission, and that the views of the minor- 
ity were respected and safeguarded by reso- 
lutions restricting the powers of delegates sent 
to the point of listening and talking, shows the 
exercise of the power of restraint in a measure 
which, to the Board, has not been, by the minor- 
ity, very graciously accorded.* 

* Until the rights of the Board of Missions are clearly 
determined and defined, such controversies are ever liable to 
take place. It was for the purpose of defining these rights 
that a resolution was introduced in, and passed by, the House 
of Deputies in the General Convention of 1913. Had this reso- 



THE RESTRAINT OF POWER 337 

lution been either passed or defeated by both Houses, the 
Panama Conference controversy would doubtless have been ob- 
viated, as the rights of the Board would then have been clearly 
defined. The discussion as to the wisdom of participation 
would not have caused such bitterness of contention had the 
question- of the rights of the Board been clearly and judicially 
defined. The following is the resolution referred to: 

' ' Whereas, this Church, through its General Convention, has 
repeatedly urged that the ties which bind Christian people 
should be strengthened, and that the Church should seek to co- 
operate with Christian people, not in communion with this 
Church, in the effort to extend the Kingdom of God in so far 
as such co-operation can be engaged in in loyalty to the faith 
and order of this Church; 

"And whereas, the Board of Missions of this Church has 
been invited to co-operate with other Christian Boards of 
Missions in matters pertaining to the ways and means of ex- 
tending the Kingdom of God; 

"Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 
Board of Missions is informed that in the judgment of the 
General Convention it has full authority to take such steps as 
it may deem wise to co-operate with other Christian Boards of 
Missions in this country and elsewhere, in united efforts to 
arouse, organise and direct the missionary spirit and activity 
of Christian people, to the end that the people of the Church 
may be enabled the better to discharge their duty to support 
the Mission of the Church at home and abroad through prayer, 
work and giving. Provided, That the expense incurred in such 
co-operative educational efforts shall not be a charge upon 
funds raised through the Apportionment. ' ' (General Conven- 
tion Journal, 1913, p. 320.) 



CHAPTER XLV 

A CONFERENCE AND CO-OPERATIVE 
COMMISSION 

THERE are many in this Church who feel 
convinced that, so long as compulsion is 
not used to require those to enter into confer- 
ence and co-operative relationship, who, as in- 
dividuals, do not wish to do so, the official 
boards and commissions of this Church already 
"have full authority' ' to engage in such con- 
ference relationship as they may determine 
upon. 

It would seem reasonable and right to insist 
that, within certain designated limits, our of- 
ficial boards and commissions should be left free 
(or, if not now free, given freedom) to confer 
and co-operate with other men and ministers 

338 



A CO-OPERATIVE COMMISSION 339 

and boards in promoting matters of common 
concern for the general welfare of the Church. 
In such matters as now enlist the co-operation 
of earnest Christian men, such as publishing 
literature, providing for the care of the sick, 
and for educating the ignorant and impov- 
erished masses at home or abroad, there should 
be no question as to the right and duty of con- 
ference and practical and common sense co- 
operation. There is no reason why theories 
or facts concerning imperilled orders should be 
injected into the consideration of this aspect of 
the question. 

If, however, objection be raised against allow- 
ing the Board of Missions and Commissions of 
the General Church to enter officially into co- 
operative relationship with others upon unde- 
termined issues, by reason of the distinctly rep- 
resentative character of the Board and Com- 
missions, then it might be well to consider the 
advisability of having the General Convention 
appoint a Commission composed of those who 
favour and desire such liberty, to be official- 



340 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

ly appointed to represent that element in the 
Church who are convinced that such confer- 
ence and co-operative endeavour would advance 
the interests of the Kingdom of God, and be 
for the good of this Church. Should such a 
Commission be appointed, with power to add 
to its numbers, then, in cases where unforeseen 
conference or co-operative opportunities arose 
concerning missions, social service, religious 
education, temperance, or world peace, or in- 
ternational reconstruction, then those of our 
official Boards and Commissions who were will- 
ing to serve on this suggested Commission of 
Conference and Co-operation could, from time 
to time, be added to its membership, that the 
Commission might have the benefit of their 
knowledge and experience in the special con- 
ference or co-operative undertakings in which, 
from time to time, it might be engaged. The 
funds for such purpose could be secured by the 
special Commission from interested churchmen. 
If, with reference to legislation authorising 
conference and co-operative relationship with 



A CO-OPERATIVE COMMISSION 341 

other Christian communions, this liberal spirit 
could prevail, the comprehensiveness desired 
would "be secured without bitterness and without 
controversy, and this Church would make her 
influence largely felt in the outworking of the 
forces which are seeking to establish the King- 
dom of God more. widely and more firmly on the 
earth. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

THE TEMPORARY NATURE AND THE 
MISSION OF FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 

IN the discussions current relative to the value 
of such federated movements as are repre- 
sented by ' ' The Federal Council of Churches, ' ' 
and the "Laymen's Missionary Movement,' ' 
the disposition is constantly shown to throw the 
question involved upon one or the other of the 
two horns of a dilemma, and then to pass judg- 
ment upon the subject as thus presented as 
though there were no other alternatives of value 
possible. On the one hand it is stated that 
such federation "is a most unhappy substitute 
for unity"; * while, on the other hand, it is as- 
serted that "the position on which the federa- 

* ' ' The Living Church. » » 

342 



FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 343 

tion is based is that the denominations are not 
to disappear."* 

If these were the only alternative ideas rep- 
resented by such federated endeavour, many 
who favour it would be unconditionally op- 
posed to such endeavours. There are those, 
however, who decline to be forced upon either 
one or the other of these horns, so sharply de- 
fined and clearly presented, who nevertheless 
favour such federated endeavour for reasons 
which seem to them good and sufficient. They 
do not for a moment consider such federation 
in any sense whatsoever as being, or as intend- 
ing to be, a transient or permanent substitute 
for the visible organic unity of the Church of 
Christ ; nor do they believe that such federated 
endeavour necessarily expresses the idea that 
denominational lines are destined to continue, 
or that they should continue. There are those 
in this Church who feel called to face the un- 
fortunate conditions which exist with a candid 
mind, illumined by the hope for an ultimate 

*Prof. Mathews. 



344 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

visible unity. They recognise the fact that at 
present lines of separation do unhappily divide 
the Church of Christ, and "hinder us from 
godly union and concord." They realise that 
organic visible unity cannot come into exist- 
ence by a forced process, or by the enactment 
of resolutions decreeing that it should exist. 
To them it seems clearly evident that some 
time seems destined to elapse before the lines 
of separation are obliterated and visible unity 
is attained. It is felt that the greater value of 
organic unity may be made to appear more 
clearly evident as a result of co-operative en- 
deavour during the testing, sifting and waiting 
time. It is felt that such federation may min- 
ister to the creation of an atmosphere of sym- 
pathy and a broader basis of mutual under- 
standing. It is believed that latent and unex- 
pressed forces now resident in the divided Body 
of Christ may be released for the good of man- 
kind as a result of an earnest effort to combine 
these spiritual energies in concentrated effort. 
It is hoped that such federated endeavour will 



FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 345 

open new approaches leading to ultimate unity ; 
and it is believed that, as a result of mutual un- 
derstanding, and closer sympathy, and a deeper 
realisation of our need of each other, the unhap- 
piness of our divisions will become more clearly 
apparent. 

The harm and waste of denominational ri- 
valry is becoming more clearly evident. The 
value of the denominations as witnesses to 
neglected aspects of truth, and as ministers to 
neglected elements in the great family of God, 
may now be said to be a fast-diminishing value. 
The light reflected from many angles has been 
seen in its prismatic variety of colour. It was 
needful that it should be so seen to be known 
and appreciated. The need now seems to be 
that the light should be focus sed with a common 
aim and purpose, and from a unified, organic 
centre. The problem of how to synthesise the 
light of truth now faces us. The Church that 
is blind to the rays of light which others see, 
in which others have walked, and to which oth- 
ers have borne witness, is not destined to be the 



346 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

Church of the reconciliation. It would seem 
that the policy of sound wisdom would be to 
bring the fragmented crystals close enough 
together to see what beauty and power of light 
might be revealed as approaches are made to 
unity. What each denomination has held and 
tested and found to be of permanent value 
should be sought for, and thankfully admitted, 
and carefully conserved. The separated ray of 
light may be of a colour that beats with hurtful 
intensity upon the sensitive soul of the artist. 
If, however, he is wise, if he be indeed a true 
artist, he will not shun and despise that sep- 
arated ray. He will think rather of the richer 
and more beautiful colour which will become 
visible when that ray has been blended with 
others. He will recognise it as essential to an 
ultimate harmony. 

At times we are too much disposed to patent 
the make of the prism which refracts the light 
rather than to conserve and use the rays of light 
refracted. "More light' ' is the dark world's 
need. Denominations have been light refrac- 



FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 347 

tors. They may still serve this purpose. They 
have also been light obscurers. The question 
which must be candidly and honestly determined 
is: does the amount and distinctive quality of 
the light refracted and reflected by a denomina- 
tion compensate sufficiently for the amount of 
light obscured, or dissipated, to justify its con- 
tinued existence? The testing time, the value- 
measuring process, will doubtless have to go 
on for a while longer. It is distinctly encourag- 
ing that a disposition is fast developing to con- 
verge the rays, and to test their blending 
powers. 

Such movements as the "Federated Council 
of Churches" and the "Laymen's Missionary 
Movement" furnish an excellent opportunity 
for experimenting to ascertain light values, and 
the possibilities for light blending, and light con- 
centration. They are not ultimate endeavours. 
As ends in themselves they would be ill-advised. 
As means to an ultimate end, they can, if wisely 
used, be made to serve a valuable purpose. 
Unity cannot be forced. It does not come by 



348 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

a killing process. It is not merely a survival 
of the fittest. It is a creative process. It is 
corrective, and assimilative, and constructive. 
It teaches men and organisations when and how 
to die, that in giving their life they may find 
it more abundantly. It sympathetically studies 
the unfit, the disproportionate, the dwarfed and 
distorted, and seeks to make them fit to survive. 
Unity does not come by adding irreconcilables, 
but by reconciling those who differ, by inspir- 
ing them with a common spirit, a common hope, 
a common purpose, a common love, and a com- 
mon faith in things eternally essential. In the 
light of this inspiration, differences which 
seemed irreconcilable vanish from the fore- 
ground of consciousness, as the things vital and 
of eternal significance grip the heart and mind 
and dominate the will to sacrifice and to serve. 
We do not know each other. How can we then 
love each other! Federations and movements 
are transient opportunities in the life of the 
Church in its transition toward ultimate unity. 
They serve to give introductions to men in- 



FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 349 

spired by a common divine purpose. They are 
neither substitutes for unity, nor seals of ap- 
proval upon disunity. They are valuable only 
in so far as they are regarded as elements in 
the creative processes of the Spirit of Christ, 
who is seeking in the chaos which men's minds 
have made to build a Body which shall, through 
the power of a great divine love and a perfect 
faith, be fitly framed together into ultimate 
unity. 

"We have a long way to go. Across the way 
which lies ahead falls the shadow of the cross. 
Yonder is Golgotha, the place of the skull. Per- 
haps it was called so to suggest the crucifixion 
of just that part of us, that the life and love that 
transcend the reason, and all mental processes, 
might be unchained from the limitations of 
pride and prejudice and delimited mental "or- 
thodoxy" and find their freedom and work their 
way to unity. 

If Federated Councils of Churches exist to 
say that we have passed up to Calvary, and have 
there been crucified, then they are blind guides 



350 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

to the blind. If denominationalism stands afar 
off, and refuses to climb to its cross, or seeks 
to avoid Calvary by accepting a snug place in 
the Federated Council, then unity must await 
the disillusionment. If, however, Federated 
Councils and co-operative movements can serve 
to open the approaches to the cross of sacrifice ; 
if they can help to create in the Church a more 
far-reaching and a clearer power of vision; if 
they can deepen, strengthen and broaden our 
sympathy and our courage; if they can lead 
men of many minds to kneel with the Master 
of us all beneath the olive trees of Gethsemane ; 
if they can help point the way to the offering 
which He calls us to make, which must be made 
precedent to an ultimate unity; then these fed- 
erated endeavours will help lead the way to the 
answer of the Master's prayer that we all may 
be one. 

THE PEOBLEM PRESSTJBE 

A way to progress is sometimes opened by 
the strong pressure of vital problems which 



FEDERATED MOVEMENTS 351 

surge against the bulwarks of ecclesiasticism, 
and the man-made wall of separation. The vast 
latent potency of eternal truth unexpressed; 
the imperious pressure of the divine will against 
humanly created limitations is sure to produce 
results. In that day the destiny of the Church 
will be determined by its responsiveness, and 
by its ability to float, as an ark, on the flood tide 
of the eternal purpose. The dam is doomed. 

In any co-operative endeavour which may 
be undertaken, mistakes are sure to be made. 
It were better, however, to learn from our mis- 
takes how to reach the far goal of truth and 
unity, than to stand idle in the presence of these 
problems which press upon us. A more perfect 
love, which will grow with a clearer under- 
standing of each other, will cast out many fears, 
and help break the chains of prejudice and 
apprehension, which must of necessity be broken 
before organic unity is possible. As Bishop 
Coxe observed, we are not to-day privileged to 
speak as Cyprian did to an undivided Church. 
Our work, of necessity, has to be done under 



352 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

different conditions. Holding tenaciously to 
our convictions with one hand, we may stretch 
forth the other to co-operate with those who 
hold with us at least a common saving faith and 
a desire to express that faith in Christian 
service. 

These federated movements may serve as 
transient means to help us, as Browning says, to 

"Conceive of truth 
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake 
As midway help till we reach fact indeed.' ' 



CHAPTER XLVII 

FEDERATION AND RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION 

AMONG the important problems pressing 
for solution is the great and vital problem 
of what is commonly called "Religious Educa- 
tion,' ' namely, the problem of educating the 
religious nature. The question of devising 
means by which the souls of children may be 
educated in conjunction with the development 
of their bodies, and the education of their minds, 
needs to be settled, and settled wisely, and with- 
out delay. It calls for the concerted action of 
all those who believe that children have souls, 
and that there are forces of illumination and 
power, divinely constituted, by which the soul 
may be educated if the point of contact can be 

353 



354 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

established. Co-operation is essential in order 
to establish and maintain this point of contact. 

In the realms of higher education the prob- 
lem is no less serious. It is interesting to note 
some of the processes out of which this prob- 
lem has arisen. It may help to point the way 
to a solution. 

Most of our American universities, which 
have been in existence for a hundred years, were 
founded in the faith and enthusiasm of eccle- 
siastical and denominational conviction. This 
was true of Harvard, William and Mary, 
Princeton, Columbia and Yale and many other 
great institutions of learning. Conscious of a 
responsibility to be the bulwarks and defenders 
of the beliefs of their respective founders and 
benefactors, these institutions, and the men 
trained in them, consecrated themselves to de- 
fend and propagate the distinctive dogmas and 
ecclesiastical tenets of their founders and fol- 
lowers. Their early presidents were learned 
doctors of the most orthodox divinity. 

This resulted in the over emphasis of sep- 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 355 

• 

arated doctrinal and ecclesiastical contentions. 
Shadows, dark and grotesque, were thrown 
across the path of faith. Souls, made for the 
light, began at last to shudder and to grow chill. 
Shibboleths were made the tests of loyalty. 
Traditionalism fettered the soul. Theories were 
propounded, and declared essential to the ex- 
istence of the Church, and as generally neces- 
sary to salvation. Then science and philosophy 
began to speak in terms of freedom. Their dog- 
matism was no less dogmatic, but it was less 
ancient. There were fewer facts to the con- 
trary. Students had their minds turned from 
the chains being forged in laboratory and lec- 
ture room, by the flash of the sparks made by 
hammer blows which fell, fast and furious, upon 
the age-long chains of ecclesiastical tradition 
and theological dogmatism. 

While the ancient chains were being broken, 
the new chains of rationalism and materialism 
were being forged. The unconscious rebound 
was from one cell in the prison house into an- 
other. From the chains of dogmatism, forged 



356 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

by the narrow process of deductive reasoning, 
men passed into captivity under the chains 
forged through the process of hasty general- 
isation in the inductive process of reasoning. 
The collegiate mind passed from the bondage 
of the grotesque dogmas of traditionalism into 
the bondage of chains forged, and still being 
forged, in crucibles, and retorts, and in the lab- 
oratories of materialistic philosophers, from 
which God had been excluded because He could 
not be found with the microscope, or telescope, 
and because the fact of His presence could not 
be ascertained by weighing the soul. 

Because men have shown ability and genius 
in the realm of their academic specialty, they 
have been allowed to believe, and to make others 
believe, that they could, speak with the au- 
thority of their accredited position, concerning 
God, the soul, and immortality, and all other 
things pertaining to spiritual life and spiritual 
relationships. These sceptics, rationalists and 
materialists who presume to decree the dogmas 
of unbelief, know, if they would admit it, that 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 357 

the faculties out of which they speak have been 
trained by dealing with material things, and 
with visible phenomena, and are, therefore, not 
trained or competent to judge concerning God 
and the soul, and the things which pertain to 
the world which lies beyond the natural order. 
On the other hand, the Church, enchained to 
the non-essential, is not able to speak with 
authority concerning the things which are es- 
sential. Her voice is too often drowned by the 
clank of her chains. With men all about her 
bound "in captivity to sin and death,' ' she has 
at times been content to contend as to whether 
they were predestined to eternal torment, or 
capable of freedom of will. Then, too, the means 
of grace by which their freedom might be se- 
cured have been delimited to certain theories of 
ministerial succession, and to the material form 
and substance and method of sacramental min- 
istration. It is the chained God who has been 
expelled from so many of our colleges and uni- 
versities. It is largely because the Church has 
bound and fettered the Christ that He has been 



358 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

put on probation by the collegiate mind. The 
unchained god of this world has been allowed 
the dominant place. He has turned the cur- 
rents of education into the channels of material- 
ism. He has set up false standards of success. 
He has unreasoningly exalted reason. He has 
blinded men's eyes to the truth that makes men 
free. He has made the dogmas of doubt to be- 
come dominant. He has decreed that the pur- 
pose of education is primarily to enable men to 
make a living, or a fortune, and has hidden from 
view the real purpose of education which is the 
enrichment of life, and the development of its 
capacity to correspond with its whole environ- 
ment, which includes God, and the eternal years 
of the soul's destiny. 

In the meanwhile, the youth of our land are 
leaving their homes, and their parish churches, 
to be plunged, all unprepared, into this vortex 
of scepticism and materialistic philosophy, with 
no clear voice to call them to a high point of 
vision, with no polar star amid the whirling 
star dust, and with no authoritative pronounce- 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 359 

ment relative to the essential truth and funda- 
mental verities of the Christian faith. 

It would be a tragedy to be compelled to wait 
for some solution to this serious problem until 
Conferences on Faith and Order had finally 
solved the great and important question of 
visible organic Church unity. Souls are daily 
passing into this vortex of doubt and unbelief. 
It is the business of the Christian Church, and 
of Christian Colleges, to help them. They 
have the right to expect it. They have a birth- 
right, as children of the Christian Church, to 
ask that the essential things be made clear to 
them, and that a light that surely and con- 
stantly shines be set in our colleges and uni- 
versities to help save them from the shipwreck 
of their faith. 

One mission of the Federated Council of 
Churches might well be to seek to bring about 
some federated action on the part of the various 
Boards of Religious Education looking to some 
practical solution of this grave and pressing 
problem. No one Church can solve the diffi- 



360 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

culty. As Mr. George Wharton Pepper has said, 
"We Christians of the several communions 
have so long distrusted one another that we in- 
dulge a presumption against any plan put for- 
ward by a group other than our own."* The 
obvious way to avoid this difficulty is to have a 
plan formulated and put into operation by the 
various "groups" co-operating 

' ' in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape." 

The bid for patronage and for endowments 
has been an influential factor in eliminating the 
denominational emphasis from most educational 
institutions once under Church control. If this 
shall result in the loss of Christian character, 
the value of the endowments is very question- 
able; and, unless something is done to give the 
assurance that the Christian faith shall not be 
compromised and repudiated, there is sure to 
be a demand for a return to the denominational 
college and university. It would seem, however, 

*"A Voice from the Crowd," p. 126. 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 361 

that by concerted action, a way could be found 
by which educational institutions which desire 
to maintain the fundamental convictions of 
faith, could make those convictions authori- 
tatively known. The unauthorised pronounce- 
ments of individual professors would then be 
known to be the unwarranted sentiments of 
individuals officially repudiated. They would 
lack what they now have, namely, the seeming 
silent sanction of the university. These phos- 
phorescent lights would then be taken from the 
academic towers, and placed where their glow 
and reach would depend upon their intrinsic 
merit. The light that shines from the tower 
should be the Light of Life, and the university 
that seeks Christian patronage, should place it 
there, and see that it is kept burning and that 
the windows from which it shines are not 
darkened. 

Most universities and colleges would doubt- 
less welcome any suggestion which the Fed- 
erated Boards of Religious Education would 
make, and would gladly co-operate in any pro- 



362 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

gramme which had back of it the consensus of 
Christian thought and conviction. 

The fear of compromising official order or 
dignity by entering into such a federated en- 
deavour is a fear which would suggest that the 
ecclesiastical soul had so far lost its sense of 
proportion and its power of vision as to make it 
completely blind to the peril in which thousands 
of the Church's children are daily placed in the 
presence of the rationalistic and materialistic 
doubt and scepticism which honeycomb many 
of the universities and colleges which they at- 
tend. 

The very serious question arises as to how 
much respect these students will have for the 
faith and order of the Church which, entrenched 
behind the bulwarks of consistency and dignity, 
refused to co-operate in an effort to create in 
our colleges and universities a Christian en- 
vironment for the education of their souls, and 
the development of their faith. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 
THE PRICE OF CONSISTENCY 

IT has been said of consistency that it is a 
jewel. We venture to assert that it is often 
a shackle forged into some corner of a man's 
mind that keeps his personality from liberty 
and progress. He who fears being inconsistent 
is afraid of truth, or is restrained as a seeker 
after truth. What he thought yesterday, what 
he thinks to-day, holds him fast. The larger 
truth beckons. He stands pat. He knows where 
he is now, he knows not where he will land if he 
ventures to step forward. He fears to trust 
his sympathies, and is sceptical as to the 
promptings of his deeper emotions. He is a 
trustee. The talent must be kept wrapped in a 
napkin, or else put into competition with other 

363 



364 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

talents. To merge it in any co-operative enter- 
prise would be inconsistent with his conscious- 
ness of trust. The gold might rust, or become 
tarnished if placed in a common treasury with 
silver and nickel and copper currency. Some- 
how he seems to doubt the power of Him, whose 
sure image he knows is stamped deep into His 
golden coin, to keep track of it if it is merged 
in some corporate enterprise. The Master 
whose coin it is might get mixed in His account- 
ing, and let this rarest coin of His currency get 
lost, or become debased. 

In dealing with eternal truth, we cannot al- 
ways be consistent. Our theories are but the 
reflections of the light of truth from the angles 
of our mind. Of course, if the angle is a pol- 
ished crystal set firm in an immutable socket, it 
will continue forever to reflect the one ray of 
light that falls upon it. But it were pure ignor- 
ance to claim that this ray was the full revela- 
tion of the glory of the sun. And shall he be ac- 
counted criminally inconsistent who largely 
trusts the spiritual conviction which prompts 



THE PRICE OF CONSISTENCY 365 

him to co-operate with those who are co-workers 
with Christ, because the light has not succeeded 
in reaching them along the path which it follows 
in reaching us? His heart, his faith, may not 
square with his logic. But who cares! The 
question is, which is the bigger, the more vital, 
the more Christlike; the love, and sympathy, 
and common faith which build men into fellow- 
ship, or the logical consistency of thought 
which puffs them up, and which builds barriers 
which keep them from dwelling together in the 
unity of spirit and the bond of peace, and in a 
deep devotion to the common purpose of sav- 
ing men with a great, catholic purpose from 
the heresy of sin and the schism of separation 
from the Saviour of men? 



CHAPTER XLIX 
THE QUESTION OF UNITY 

IT is insisted that there can be no unity with- 
out the apostolic succession. Has it been 
proven that, in any age of the Church's history, 
there has been unity with it! The essential value 
of the historic episcopate as a means to secure 
and preserve the organic visible unity of the 
Church may and should be urged and main- 
tained ; but there are other forces which need to 
be considered which must of necessity be con- 
sidered precedent to this, without which no out- 
ward uniformity of order would be permanent 
and spiritually potent. There was a perfectly 
regular and valid ministry while the apostles 
were on earth, and yet there were divisions 
among them, some going to the Jews, and others 

366 



THE QUESTION OF UNITY 367 

to the Gentiles, as a result of this very ques- 
tion of an ancient succession. In the Churches 
to which they ministered there was a woful lack 
of unity. St. Paul writes to Corinth, "I hear 
that there be divisions among you, and verily I 
believe it. ' ' Some were claiming to be of Paul 
the apostle to the Gentiles; some of Cephas 
the apostle of the circumcision, and others still 
of Apollos. St. Paul calls this fleshly contention. 
For, says he, "Who then is Paul, and who is 
Apollos but ministers by whom ye believed? 
. . . Therefore let no man glory in men, for ye 
are Christ's and Christ is God's." The schism 
which, however, he most deplores is that which 
was occasioned by sin cutting off members of 
the Body of Christ from communion and fellow- 
ship with Him. 

This is surely the kind of schism which min- 
isters of the apostolic succession of spirit will 
ever most deeply deplore. Sin is the great 
maker of schism in the Body of Christ. It sun- 
ders souls from Him. We should surely find 
some other name than " schismatics" for those 



368 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

who are spending their lives at home amid pri- 
vations, and in far-away lands amid perils, 
seeking to build souls into the Body of Christ, 
and endeavouring, through prayer and labour, 
to heal the schisms which sin is making. If we 
are in earnest in our hatred of schism, we will 
seek closer fellowship with those who are 
spending themselves in seeking to heal and pre- 
vent the mortal schism made by vice and sin 
in the Body of our common Lord and Mas- 
ter. 

Somehow there is a very deep feeling, which 
transcends the power of words to describe, that 
we are after all, perhaps, failing to put the em- 
phasis just where it is most needed in consid- 
ering those things which make for the unity of 
the Body of Christ. 

There are many who have been born and 
reared in this Church, who cherish her beauti- 
ful liturgy, who revere her ancient heritage, 
who hold her unbroken continuity through or- 
ders and sacraments as a rare and priceless 
possession and trust, and who are deeply 



THE QUESTION OF UNITY 369 

conscious of the depth and richness of her bal- 
anced teaching; who feel that her place would 
be more glorious if she were made free to gladly 
acknowledge the irregular ministry and sacra- 
ments of those who, for reasons over which, 
in many instances, they had no control, were 
separated from the regularity of ordered suc- 
cession as this Church has retained it, and yet, 
who, with what we regard as a handicap, have 
fought a good fight, kept the faith which unites 
the souls of men with the saving Christ, and 
have, through what Bishop Doane calls a valid, 
though irregular ministry, built millions of 
immortal souls into deathless union with the 
Lord of life. 

What credentials, what larger, richer and 
more golden harvest have we to show in proof 
of the fact that what we regard as a priceless 
heritage, is of such closeness with the apostles 
that such a measure of special grace and power 
flows into us and through us by way of this 
special and exclusive channel, as to justify us 
in withholding fellowship, conference and co- 



370 THE CHURCH ENCHAINED 

operation from those who, without this special 
means of grace, are empowered by the Holy 
Ghost for the work of their ministry in building 
the Father's children into the Body of His Son? 



CHAPTER L 
THE VISION OF THE SON OF MAN 

THE Master stands in the silence there upon 
a mount called Olivet. Below is the City 
of Zion, proud of its ancient heritage, and un- 
questionably conscious of its orthodoxy. From 
its centre rises the ancient temple of Jehovah. 
At its altar minister the priests of the ancient, 
divinely appointed order and of unbroken suc- 
cession in the tribe of Levi. From its altar 
rises the smoke of the divinely appointed sacri- 
fice. * ' Beholding the city, He wept over it, say- 
ing, Jerusalem, Jerusalem." 

"And there they crucify Him. ,, The years 
pass. An army encircles the city's walls. Not 
one stone is left upon another. "How often 
would I have gathered thee together; and ye 

371 



372 THE OHURCH ENCHAINED 

would not. Behold your house is left unto you 
desolate.' ' 

Invisible He stands to-day among us. Our 
eyes are holden and we know Him not. He calls. 
Our ears are deaf and we hear Him not. He 
weeps over the tragedy of the world, and over 
the tragedy of His Church. What is He say- 
ing? 

May God the Father, God the Son and God 
the Holy Ghost give grace to His Church that 
she may hear and obey what the Master says 
as He looks down upon us and weeps. May He 
grant that we may not be destined through dis- 
obedience to His voice to hear about us the fall- 
ing of the stones of a temple left desolate. 



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